No, this video doesn’t show Muslims enslaving Christian Africans

A video showing a long line of shirtless men, their hands tied behind their backs, walking down a muddy road under the watch of armed men, has gone viral online. 

The footage was shared by Islamophobic social media accounts, including FanKarolineLeavitt – an account dedicated to the White House press secretary – and Dr Maalouf, who posted it on June 23 and 25, respectively. Together, these two posts have garnered nearly four million views. 

The authors of the posts claim that the video shows “Muslims (...) enslaving Black Christian Africans”. They also accuse “mainstream media, leftists, the UN and the woke Pope” of covering up the story.

The comments section is flooded with Islamophobic messages and hate speech targeting Muslims. 

However, this video has actually been taken out of context

Arrests in DR Congo

Our team ran the video through a reverse image search (see our guide here). We found that the same video was published on May 14 by the X account of Kivu Morning Post. The Goma-based local media outlet covers news from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. 

While the footage is identical, the caption tells a very different story. According to the Congolese news outlet, the video depicts individuals from the eastern province of South Kivu who were detained in the Kunda region, in the northeastern province of Ituri, on suspicion of ties to armed groups.

However, the Kivu Morning Post reports that this version of the event has been contested by the Bashi community – a Bantu ethnic group in central Africa – who claim those arrested were targeted simply because they are Bashi.

No religious link established

A search for the French keywords “arrestation civils Sud-Kivu” ("arrest civilians South Kivu") leads to several local news reports covering the same event.

One of them is a May 13 report by Radio Okapi, the station operated by the peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It describes events similar to those reported by the Kivu Morning Post, but also provides further details. 

The article reports that more than a hundred civilians, mostly young people from South Kivu, were arrested by the army on May 13 in the village of Kunda. It says that their presence in the area, which has been plagued by armed violence, was deemed suspicious.

“Authorities suspect them of belonging to groups characterised as 'subversive', an allegation that has not been formally established”, Radio Okapi reports.

They appear to have been identified as agricultural and mining workers. After their arrest, they were allegedly transferred to Bunia the next day and detained at the military headquarters awaiting interrogation. The outcome of these proceedings remains unspecified.

In any case, none of the reports by the local press mentions any religious dimensions, nor do they refer to Arab Muslims enslaving Christians. Instead, sources point to a security force intervention amid armed tensions and suspicions linked to armed groups active in the region. 

Video previously debunked by Congo Check 

The video had previously been taken out of context by online users last May and verified by the fact-checking outlet Congo Check.

At the time, a number of online users claimed that the footage showed fighters from the M23, a rebel group battling the Congolese army in eastern DR Congo. 

Congo Check debunked the claim, tracing the video back to the same origin identified here, linked to the arrests of civilians in the eastern DR Congo.

This article has been translated from the original in French.