NHM Employees’ Protest Video Falsely Shared as Article 370 Unrest
A Facebook page called ‘The Hyderabad Digest’ had also uploaded the same video on Monday, 12 August.
CLAIM
Amid the current tension in Jammu and Kashmir, a video uploaded on Sunday, 11 August, by ‘The Live TV’ on YouTube claims that several people protested in Kashmir against the abrogation of Article 370. The caption states that the video shows the situation in Kashmir at present, after Eid prayers were offered by people.
The caption of the video reads: ‘EID की नमाज के बाद कश्मीर के ताजा हालात, Article 370 के विरोध में सड़क पर उतरे कश्मीरी’
(Translation: After offering Eid’s namaaz, this is the current situation in Kashmir, in order to protest against the abrogation of Article 370, people have taken to the streets.)
The video had over 81,000 views till the time this article was written.
A Facebook page called ‘The Hyderabad Digest’ had also uploaded the same video on Monday, and garnered over 11,000 views till the time this article was written.
The archived version of the post can be viewed here.
WHAT WE FOUND
At 0:30 seconds, the barricades of Srinagar Police can be seen in the YouTube video. Further, at 0:33 seconds, the word ‘employees’ can be seen on the banner that the people are holding at the protest.
Consequently, we conducted a Google search to find out if any recent protest happened in Srinagar by employees. The search led us to protests held recently by Public Health Engineering (PHE) and National Health Mission (NHM) employees, following which we scoured YouTube for both PHE employees’ protest and the one held by NHM employees.
On searching with the key words, ‘Srinagar NHM employees protest’ we found that the same video had been uploaded on 12 February and was titled ‘Police foil NHM employees protest march in Srinagar’.
Further, we searched on Google for protest-related images using the key words ‘NHM employees in Srinagar,’ and found that there were stock images uploaded by Alamy on 12 February.
On doing a frame-to-frame comparison of the video and the images uploaded by Alamy, er found that the faces seen in the Alamy image (left) and the ones seen in the video (right) are the same.
The caption along with the Alamy image mentioned that the NHM employees had protested against the government demanding equal pay for equal work among other things.
We found another Alamy image in which not only is the hoarding of State Bank of India (SBI) the same but also the woman seen in one of the frames of the video.
We also found a Greater Kashmir article with the headline, ‘Police baton charge NHM employees to foil protest march.’ The image used in the article also had similar SBI hoardings.
ABOUT THE NHM EMPLOYEES’ PROTEST
According to the Greater Kashmir article, on 12 February, NHM employees had demonstrated a protest in Srinagar from Partap Park towards the Raj Bhawan. Near Kothibagh police station, the police put barricades and conducted a lathi charge. The police also used of pepper spray, the article quoted an eye witness as saying.
The employees had demanded, ‘regularisation in a phased manner, equal pay for equal work and other social security benefits,’ added the report.
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