By Swasti Chatterjee
An old video of nude demonstrations by women in Chile to protest against the repression of the then President Sebastián Piñera and the national law enforcement police is circulating on WhatsApp with false claims that it shows topless anti-hijab protesters of Iran.
The video shows visuals of naked women performing a demonstration against a giant puppet which can be seen firing at them. Another puppet dressed in a suit and tie can be seen controlling the thread of the puppet with the gun.
The video is going viral on WhatsApp with a caption in English, "Anti Hijab protest now escalated to a Topless protest in Iran... From removing of hijab to throwing of hijab to burning of hijab to cleaning of shoes by hijab! From opening of face to opening of breasts to opening of waist!! It will now be straight to bottomless to No-clothes tomorrow!!! Wait for more to come.. Iranian Heroines will lead the world Muslim Ladies to a Hijab se Azadi, Burqa se Barbadi Domain."
The video is viral in the backdrop of the anti-hijab protests which erupted across Iran after a young woman Mahsa Amini died in the custody of morality police following her arrest for not wearing the hijab properly. The death led women across the world offering solidarity to the Iranian women who have been protesting against their government's hijab policy. Several women reportedly cut their hair and burnt their headscarves to protest against the laws that enforce females to cover their hair and follow certain dress codes.
Click here for an archive of the video.
Viewers discretion: The video contains nudity.
BOOM received the message on its helpline number for verification.
The same caption was earlier circulating with a protest scene from Amsterdam against the Iranian regime's decision about the hijab policy; The captions misleadingly claimed that the incident happened in Iran. Read BOOM's fact check here.
__Fact Check
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BOOM broke the video in its keyframes and ran a reverse image search on few of the frames. The search led us to a Spanish article published on November 26, 2019 on El Cooperante. The article, titled, "The strange protest "naked" of young people against Sebastián Piñera" features a screengrab with the protesters and the giant-sized puppets as seen in the viral video.
According to the article feminists demonstrated against the then Chilean President Sebastián Piñera and the national law enforcing police Carabineros.
Upon further keyword search in Spanish we found two more articles published in December, 2019, featuring the same visuals from the viral video. According to the articles, 59 days after the October 18, 2019 protests in Chile, a group portrayed a 'powerful representation of the abuses committed by the carabineros.'
Click here and here to read the articles.
Here is a tweet from December, 2019.
The articles further state that the demonstration took place in front of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago in December, 2019.
We then looked up the varsity on Google Maps and were able to geolocate the area where the demonstration took place three years ago. Click here for the streetview of the area where the demonstration took place.
Here is a comparison of the same.
In 2019 Chile saw months of social uprisings and protests against inequality and the then government led by President Sebastián Piñera. According to a Reuters report the 2019 protests had left about 30 people dead and a trail of destruction around Chile's captial Santiago. The unrest led to formation of a representative assembly to redraft the country's constitution.
