Posts criticising Australian migration policy misuse decade-old picture

Published on July 22, 2025 at 04:55
3 min read
By Dene CHEN, AFP Australia

A photo of women in sky-blue burqas -- typically associated with the Taliban's strict dress code in Afghanistan -- has been edited and misleadingly featured in an article criticising Australia's immigration policy. Social media users believed the picture depicted "recent refugees" in Australia but it was shot in Afghanistan more than a decade ago, the photographer told AFP.

"Half of all recent refugees in Australia are on welfare and 44% can't speak English," reads a headline emblazoned on an image of women in burqas published on Facebook by The Noticer -- an online news site that Australian-based ABC News says "promotes white supremacist ideologies" (archived link).

The post has been shared over 2,500 times since its publication on July 4, 2025.

Screenshot of the false post, taken on July 21, 2025

It links to an article highlighting statistics the government released in late June about various types of permanent migrants who moved to Australia between 2012 and 2021. Among those surveyed are those classified as "humanitarian migrants", more commonly known as refugees and asylum seekers (archived link).

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 44 percent of humanitarian migrants who were in the country for less than five years do not speak English very well, though the survey noted that proficiency "was higher for permanent migrants who had lived in Australia for longer".

The image also spread on Facebook, X and Instagram by users criticising Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Labor government's migration policies.

Some social media users appeared to think the women in burqas were in Australia.

One commented: "Their country has a rule that women's heads must be fully covered at all times, and usually their bodies too. Why aren't they told that that rule does not apply here and the law states that your face and head must be fully visible when entering any businesses?"

Another user said: "Just look around the shops or your neighbourhood, these in Islamic and Indian garments walking and enjoying the streets whilst you are on the way to work. Yes, we are carrying them so wake up!"

But the photo has been cropped and shared in a misleading context.

A reverse image search found a larger photo on the Flickr page for The Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI), which is part of University of California Irvine School of Social Sciences (archived here and here).

Screenshot comparison between the false post (left) and the original image, with an orange box added by AFP denoting how it was cropped

That picture reveals more clues that the women were not in Australia, as it shows the faces of the people around them and their attire, as well as a red shelter being held up with wooden poles.

The Peace Research Institute Oslo published the same photo credited to researcher Jan Chipchase (archived link).

He told AFP that he took it "a long time ago" in Afghanistan, and confirmed IMTFI's Flickr page information, which dated it as being shot on August 22, 2010.

"That would be correct. I did a project for the IMTFI at that point," he said in an email on July 11.

Since their return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have imposed an ultra-strict vision of Islamic law, modelled on their previous rule from 1996 to 2001. Women are required to have their bodies and faces covered (archived link).

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