This video does not show people urinating on an "African child"

On September 17, the following message, shared by an anonymous user, went viral on Twitter: “Those responsible for this human rights abuse must be arrested and prosecuted.. This is the filth of France, the ugliest scandal of the 21st century!!! The inhuman and shocking scene of two men and a woman urinating on an African child, in one of the French towns” (sic).

The tweet is accompanied by a 45-second video in which you can see a man, first, and then a woman urinating on another person.. Due to the quality of the video, it is not possible to obtain more information about the latter.

However, this is false. The images do not show two men and a woman urinating on an “African child” nor are they related to France. This is a performance by the Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo in Brazil in 2013.

These people did not urinate on any “African children”

To verify the veracity of the statements made in the viralized message, Infoveritas has carried out a reverse image search with the Google tool. Among the results of this investigation, there appears this other tweet, from an anonymous user, published on November 22, 2022, which reads: “Another racist attack against Africans. White people urinating on a black woman. But why? Chamisa and his people still worship Westerners despite this inhumane treatment of black people.”

The message cites another tweet in which the same video as the viral message can be seen.. Among the comments, it is noted that the content corresponds to a performance by the artist Regina José Galindo, from Guatemala, as a protest against violence against women's bodies.

In this way, a new search on Google with the keyword 'Regina José Galindo' shows the official website of the artist. In 2013, Galindo carried out a performance called Piedra. In the photos of said performance you can see a man urinating on a woman painted black. In fact, both the currently viral video and another of the images published by Galindo on his website show, in the background, the same spectator, with a polo shirt and a cardboard cup at his feet.

The description of the performance specifies: “My body remains motionless, covered in charcoal, like stone. Two volunteers and someone from the public urinate on the stone body” (sic). The publication is dated 2013, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Another Google search with the keywords 'Regina José Galindo' and 'stone' yields a video, uploaded to the Vimeo platform on December 6, 2016, which shows the footage that has gone viral these days on social networks. It is a longer cut, 2 minutes and 41 seconds; The viralized content is shown starting at minute 1:16.

Therefore, the viralized video does not show images of two men and a woman urinating on an alleged African child, but rather a performance by the artist Regina José Galindo in 2013.. It also has no relation to France, the performance took place in Brazil.

INFOVERITAS verifies that…

It is false that the viralized video shows images of two men and a woman urinating on an alleged African child. It is, in fact, the performance Piedra, by the Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo, which took place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2013.. Nor is it related to France, as messages on social networks claim.