Old video of Ghana’s fire festival falsely linked to Kenyan tax law protests

The statement was repeated elsewhere in Twitter It is Facebook.

Anti-tax protests

Demonstrations in Kenya turned deadly on June 25 when protesters stormed parliament, where lawmakers were voting to pass the 2024 Finance Bill. The proposed tax law was designed to introduce new duties and fees on a range of commodities, including basic goods.

Amid growing unrest, President William Ruto eventually announced withdrawal from the account.

The youth-led demonstrations were initially mostly peaceful, with thousands of people marching in Nairobi and other parts of the country against proposed tax increases.

But tensions rose sharply when police officers opened fire on crowds who later ransacked the parliament complex.

AFP journalists mountain range three people bleeding profusely and lying motionless on the ground near the parliament (archived here).

As the chaos increased and crowds began to abandon the city center, reports circulated of a heavy police deployment and live fire in Githurai 45, a short distance from Nairobi.

The Law Society of Kenya called for an investigation into the alleged shootings, dubbed the “Githurai massacre” (archived here).

Newspapers were about mayhem and the use of lethal force: headlines like “Internal Night of Terror for Githurai residents” and “Conflicting number of deaths, pain and agony as families to search for for their loved ones” were used to describe the events on Githurai (archived here It is here).

However, the video of a crowd marching with tiki torches does not show a night vigil in Githurai.

Fire Festival

Using the InVID WE Verify verification tool, we located the same video on TikTok here It is herepublished August 8, 2022 (archived here It is here).

“Annual Dagomba Fire Festival in Ghana,” says one post. The Dagomba are an ethnic group.

In one of the TikTok clips, viewers use Dagbani, a language widely spoken in northern Ghana.

According to reports in Ghana (see here, here It is here), the festival is known as Bugum Chugu and is celebrated annually in the first month of the lunar year Dagomba (archived here, here It is here).

The celebration is marked with singing, dancing, drums and the waving of lit torches made of grass.

AFP fact check previously unmasked the same video when circulated in Burkina Faso alongside claims that it showed a Pan-African march.

The owner of this TikTok account confirmed at the time that the clip was recorded in Yendi, a city in northern Ghana.