“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!”
This was the message that accompanied a video tweeted by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the political party headed by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, on August 24, claiming that it showed the Indian Army attacking Kashmiris protestors.
The video has been viewed over 86,000 times so far.
Jammu and Kashmir has been in a state of lockdown ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government on August 5 revoked the state’s special status and split it into two Union Territories.
Old videos
The clip in question is actually a combination of two old videos. In the video , the logo of JK News, a local news channel, can be seen at the bottom right corner along with the date which is given as August 23, 2019. This suggests that the video has been shared recently.
In addition, the Facebook Live icon can be seen in the top left corner of the screen.
Alt News broke up the video into several frames using InVid, and reverse-searched some of these frames. We found that the first part of the video, from 0:00 to 1.29 minutes, is of a protestthat took place in Kashmir in 2018. According to its description, the clashes between protestors and security personnel took place at HMT, Srinagar.
Alt News looked up news reports from June 2018 and found that protests had erupted on the outskirts of Srinagar a day after the Jammu and Kashmir chief of the Islamic State group had been killed in an encounter at Anantnag in Kashmir.
Alt News 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, from 1:29 minutes onward, pertains to a video of violence in Jammu and Kashmir published by the Associated Press. This video is from July 2017.
The description on the video says, “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.
This makes it clear that the video posted by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf on Twitter does not pertain to the recent developments in Jammu and Kashmir.
This article first appeared on Alt News.
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