Video of Protest Against Iranian Government in Amsterdam Falsely Shared as Iran

The video shows a protest against the Iranian government outside Amsterdam's Royal Palace in the Netherlands.

The video shows a protester identified as Niloufer Fuladi in the Netherlands.

(Source: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

A viral video of a protest, showing a topless woman speaking from a stage to a crowd of people holding the Iranian national flag, is being shared to claim that it shows a video of anti-hijab protests in Iran.

Protests sparked across Iran after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody on 16 September, after being arrested for "improperly" wearing the hijab. Since the beginning of the protests, over 150 people have reportedly been killed, as per the BBC.

However, this video is not from Iran. It shows a protest against Iran's mandatory hijab law in the Netherlands' Amsterdam, and the woman in the video was identified as one Niloufer Fuladi.

CLAIM

The video is being shared claiming to show women going topless in response to the Iranian government's crackdown on anti-hijab protesters across the country.

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WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Using InVID, a video verification tool on Google Chrome, we divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search on some of them.

One of these results took us to a website called Shaya News, which carried a still from the video.

The translated version of this website identified the woman in the video as one Niloufer Fuladi, mentioning that the protest took place in the Netherlands.

Taking a cue from this, we carried out a keyword search with the woman's name and 'protest', which led us to a tweet by Radio Zamaneh's – an Amsterdam-based Persian language radio channel – verified Twitter account, with the same video.

The video mentioned that it was from Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The text shared with this video loosely translates to "A protest by Niloufar Fuladi, an artist and one of the girls of Elkhebal Street, against the mandatory hijab and the murder of Mahsa Amini by the government in Amsterdam, Netherlands on 1 October 2022."

In this video, we noticed a yellow sign that read 'Madame Tussaud' at a distance.

We noticed that a sign read 'Madam Tussaud.'

Using this as a keyword with Amsterdam, we looked for a similar sign in the city, and found one located at Dam Square using Google Maps' street view feature.

The archway and the neighbouring building match in both screenshots.

We also saw similar grill designs outside Amsterdam's Royal Palace, when compared to visuals from the protest video.

The design on the grill match in both visuals.

A search for more visuals from the events using Persian keywords, led us to a tweet about the protest by Iranian media organisation Tasnim News.

A video of the protest was also shared by Voice of America Farsi's verified Twitter account.

All media sources shared the video as one of Fuladi protesting against the Iranian government's hijab law in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Evidently, the video of the protest against the Iranian government's mandatory hijab rule is from Netherlands' Amsterdam, and not from Iran.

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