FACT CHECK: Does This Image Show A Woman Carrying A Sign Saying, ‘My P***y Is Open For Refugees’?
An image shared on Facebook allegedly shows a woman wearing a placard saying, “My p***y is open for refugees.”
Verdict: False
The image has been altered to include the word “p***y.” In the original photo, the sign actually says, “My door is open for refugees.”
Fact Check:
The U.S. government is working to resettle over 60,000 Afghan refugees in America over the coming weeks following the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan last month, CNN reported. (RELATED: Viral Tweet Claims The Afghanistan War Killed Nearly 250,000 Afghans, The US Only Has Once Accepted 1,592 Afghan Refugees Since 2001)
Amid such refugees starting to arrive in the U.S., some Facebook users have been sharing an image purportedly showing a woman wearing a sign that reads: “My p***y is open for refugees.” The message on the sign, however, has been photoshopped.
A TinEye reverse image search shows the original, unaltered photo appears to come from a 2015 article published by CKOM News about a Canadian rally in support of Syrian refugees. In the unedited picture, the placard says, “My door is open for refugees,” a slogan used by Amnesty International Canada. The featured image in the CKOM News article has since been changed to a different picture.
Check Your Fact found several media reports from 2018 detailing how the article’s picture of the woman with the “My door is open for refugees” placard had been digitally manipulated on social media at the time to say “My legs are open for refugees.” Canadian journalist Lasia Kretzel took the photo, BuzzFeed News reported in July of that year.
Kretzel wrote an opinion article for The Guardian in 2018 about her photo being doctored after British politician Nigel Farage shared the altered “My legs are open for refugees” version on Twitter.
“I had first seen this doctored image about a year ago,” Kretzel wrote in the opinion piece. “It was frustrating to see my work altered, taken out of context, and used to serve someone else’s agenda. It didn’t matter what that agenda was. It mattered that they were spreading false information.”
