Old video of protest in Haryana shared on Pak social media as police brutality on Kashmiris

The revocation of J&K’s special status under Article 370 has drawn a deluge of misinformation from both sides of the border – India and Pakistan. While on the Indian side there has been an attempt to portray normalcy in the Valley, misinformation streaming from Pakistan attempts to show the Indian government’s brutality on Kashmiris. In the latest such case, a video where female protestors are being dragged by the police and pushed inside a bus is floating on Pakistani social media ecosystem with the claim that the scenes were recently shot in Kashmir.

The above video was shared by a Facebook page ‘MaaZoo’ and has attracted over 3 million views and nearly one lakh shares since August 23. The page claims that the video depicts the oppression of Kashmiris after the dilution of Article 370 – “ویڈیو پر کلک کر کے شیئر کریں کشمیر کی تازہ ترین ویڈیو اتنا شیئر کریں کہ مقتدر قوتوں کو شرم اجائے مظلوم کشمیر کی اواز بنے.”

The same video has also been circulated by multiple Twitter users.

We are forced to say that the @UN is blind and deaf. Mountains of cruelty are broken on Kashmiris But the UN is silent#KashmiriGenocideByModi pic.twitter.com/Dxt98qQHmQ

— عامر شہزاد غازی (@GaziAmirGujar) August 24, 2019

Old video of teachers’ protest in Haryana

There are several hints which debunk the falseness of the claim that the video was shot in Kashmir. A person on the other side of the camera, possibly the individual shooting the video, says, “This is a protest by JBT teachers outside the CM’s office. These are live scenes of the protest from Karnal.

Karnal is a city in Haryana and JBT stands for Junior Basic Training which is a diploma level Educational course.

Furthermore, there is ‘Karnal Haryana’ imprinted on the side of a bus visible in the video.

Alt News searched for the video on Facebook using keywords – “JBT teachers protest Haryana” – and we were directed to the same clip which is currently viral with a false narrative. The video was a Facebook Live posted by the page ‘Karnal Breaking News’ on June 11, 2017. According to the page, women JBT teachers were protesting outside the Chief Minister’s Camp Office when women police personnel dragged and shoved them into buses. The protest was organised in CM City Karnal by JBT teachers to save their jobs.

According to a June 2, 2017 report by The Tribune, “The Haryana Government has issued a revised combined merit list of JBT and primary teachers following the directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. With the revised list, nearly 1,225 Junior Basic Training (JBT) teachers and Primary teachers (PRTs), who were issued appointment letters, are set to lose their jobs.”

A video of a two-year-old protest in Haryana has been picked up by Pakistani social media users and floated as protests in Kashmir where the police are manhandling the people. Similar misinformation has been peddled in the past – a protest in Mizoram was shared as that in Kashmir, video of Burhan Wani’s funeral procession was floated as Kashmiris protesting and another clip of a funeral procession in Kashmir was shared as citizens protesting against Article 370’s dilution.