The image showing a girl child claimed to be dead during her wedding night with an elderly man is misleading!
Images of both the small girl and the elderly man are unrelated to the viral claim stated
Claim
Rating
Explanation
A photo of an 8-year-old girl in Yemen allegedly bleeding to death the same night she married a man five times her age has gone viral on social media, along with a photo showing the girl and an elderly man.
Also, the image added that “Arwa Othman, head of Yemen House of Folklore and the main rights campaigner, said the young lady, recognized as Rawan, was hitched to a 40-year-old man before the end of last week in the town of Meedi in Hajjah territory in northwestern Yemen.”
You can view similar claim posts here, here, and here.
Banning Islam in the West to protect your children pic.twitter.com/jbvuRWlFXm
— Salwan Momika (@Salwan_Momika1) June 9, 2024
What’s the truth?
Upon investigating the circulating story, it was discovered that it was published on The Tatva website in 2022 along with the images of the child and elderly man. On social media right now, this news is becoming widely shared.
After more investigation, it turned out that the story was spreading virally on social media in 2023 through an X’s post.
We took this as a sign and conducted additional research to learn that this occurrence, which happened in 2013, was reported by multiple media sites, including The Guardian and India Today. Interestingly, neither the young child nor the elderly man’s images have been added to those articles.
Following more research, we discovered that Yemeni law enforcement officers had looked into the allegation and concluded that the claim was untrue, according to “Gulf News,” a Dubai-based publication. Thus, we looked into this news’s authenticity in more detail.
However, after doing more research, we came across a Gulf News video on YouTube titled “Yemeni Father Denies 8-year-old Daughter was Married and Killed.” In addition, he asserts that the narrative is a fabricated story. A girl child and her father can be seen in the video refuting all of the widely circulated allegations.
Further, we found a report that is currently doing the rounds on the website Oblong Media cites the same viral girl’s photo. However, it stated, “Photo for illustrative purposes only,” beneath the girl’s picture. This demonstrated that the child in the picture is unrelated to the information being conveyed.
Further investigation revealed that in 2012, the same girl’s picture appeared on the Russian website “Smotrim.ru” precisely at 23 seconds into a video.
A translation of the video reads, “U.N. The Children’s Fund has published shocking statistics: according to experts, a third of women in the world are forced into child marriage. Such examples are still found in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States)”.
Next, we investigated the photo of elderly man who appeared to have married the little girl in the widely shared photo. Ebrahim Yusuf Kazi, an imam of the Broad Street Mosque in Swindon, England, was sentenced to two years in prison for assaulting young women. It turns out that he was not from Yemen, as reported by a BBC media story in 2011.
Thus, it is evident that the report that is making the rounds about the 2013 wedding day death of an 8-year-old child in Yemen is false. Because there is no relationship between the people featured in the two pictures. Since 2012, a picture of the baby’s face that is spreading has been making the rounds in Russian media. Nor is the elderly man in the news from Yemen.
This clarifies that the girl baby and elderly man have no connection or links as the viral claim suggests.
Conclusion:
Thus, we conclude that the viral claim showing images of a girl and an elderly man stating that the child died on her wedding night is false. Also, Gulf News reported that the claim is untrue stating that both the father and her daughter appeared in front of camera to deny the claim.
We ask our readers to exercise greater caution before believing such unverified claims, as this collage image is occasionally shared with different narratives that rise to the top of search results pages in an attempt to spread fake information.
