Imran Khan's party shares old videos from Kashmir to portray recent unrest - Alt News
Arjun Sidharth
26th August 2019 / 6:41 pm
“Curfews and media blackout cannot contain revolutions that emerge as a result of grave human rights violations. Yet Indian Govt continues to alienate Kashmir. Unarmed men, women, children being attacked by Indian Army. Inhumane!”
With these words, on August 24, 2019, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the political party headed by Pakistani PM Imran Khan, tweeted a video claiming that it represented the supposed brutal suppression of Kashmiris by the Indian army. The video has been viewed over 86,000 times so far.
Curfews and media blackout cannot contain revolutions that emerge as a result of grave human rights violations. Yet Indian Govt continues to alienate Kashmir. Unarmed men, women, children being attacked by Indian Army. Inhumane! #Kashmir pic.twitter.com/ixfPYd86F3
— PTI (@PTIofficial) August 23, 2019
The above tweet has been retweeted over 3500 times. With the revocation of key provisions of Article 370 by the Indian government, social media has witnessed a flurry of misinformation from all sides of the political divide.
The video in question, tweeted by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and claimed to be of a recent crackdown in the Kashmir valley, is actually a combination of two old videos.
In the video tweeted by PTI, the logo of JK News (a local news channel) can be seen at the bottom right corner along with the date which states August 23, 2019. This suggests that the video has been shared recently. Moreover, the Facebook Live icon can be seen in the top left corner of the screen.
Alt News broke the video into several frames using InVid, and reverse-searched some of these frames. We found that the first part of the video i.e. from 0:00 to 1:29 minutes, pertains to a protest which took place in Kashmir in 2018. According to its description, the clashes between people and security personnel took place at HMT, Srinagar.
Alt News looked up news reports of June 2018 and found that protests had erupted on the outskirts of Srinagar a day after the J&K chief of the Islamic State (IS) was killed in an encounter at Anantnag in Kashmir.
We compared key frames of the video tweeted by PTI with the video from 2018, and found that the two are identical.
The second part of the video tweeted by PTI i.e. from 1:29 minutes onward, pertains to a video of violence in J&K published by Associated Press. This video is from July 2017, and has been posted below. Its description states, “Government forces fired shotgun pellets and tear gas Wednesday in the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir as residents carried the body of a young rebel killed with two other militants during a gunbattle with Indian troops in the disputed region. The gunfight began overnight after Indian troops raided western Radbugh village following a tip that militants were hiding there, said police Inspector-General Muneer Ahmed Khan.”
Once again, Alt News compared the two videos and ascertained that they pertain to the same event.
In conclusion, the video posted by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf on Twitter, is a combination of two videos dating back to 2018 and 2017 respectively. They do not pertain to the recent developments in J&K. The claim was earlier fact checked by Boom.
Arjun Sidharth is a writer with Alt News. He has previously worked in the television news industry, where he managed news bulletins and breaking news scenarios, apart from scripting numerous prime time television stories. He has also been actively involved with various freelance projects. Sidharth has studied economics, political science, international relations and journalism. He has a keen interest in books, movies, music, sports, politics, foreign policy, history and economics. His hobbies include reading, watching movies and indoor gaming.
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