A video showing people raising pro-Khalistan and pro-Pakistan slogans has gone viral with a claim that these were part of the farmers' protests held in London.
However, we found that the video, which can be traced back to September 2019, is from New York, US. It showed protesters sloganeering against Prime Minister Narendra Modi while he delivered his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
CLAIM
One of the posts with the video tweeted by Om Prakash Rawat said, “आंदोलन के नाम पर अल्लाह-हू-अकबर, पंजाब बनेगा खालिस्तान, कश्मीर पाकिस्तान… के नारे! ‘ये कैसे अन्नदाता हैं?’ #FarmersProtest #Khalistan #London देश द्रोही मत कहिये देश के असली अन्नदाता है! देश द्रोही यों ने किसान आंदोलन को पूरा हाईजैक कर लिया है सभी राजनीतिक दलों ने मिलकर?”
[Translation: Slogans of Allah-Hu-Akbar, Punjab will become Khalistan, Kashmir will become Pakistan… in the name of protests! 'Are these people farmers?'
#FarmersProtest #Khalistan #London. Don’t call them traitors, they are farmers. Traitors in different political parties have completely hijacked the farmers’ protest.]
Canadian-Pakistani author Tarek Fatah also shared the video with a similar caption that was shared by thousands of his followers on Facebook and Twitter.
The video was also viral on Facebook.
Right-wing website Opindia wrote an article about the video and tweeted about the same. They have since deleted the tweet and have updated their copy.
The Quint also received multiple queries on its WhatsApp tipline about the same.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We fragmented the video into several keyframes, using the InVID Google Chrome extension and conducted a reverse image search on a few keyframes.
We found that the same video was tweeted in November 2019, much before the farmers’ protest started.
We then went through the keyframes and found a still where we saw PM Modi’s name on a US flag. Following this, we conducted an image search using keywords “Protests against PM Modi in the US” and found similar images from 27 September 2019, when he was in New York for his speech at the UNGA.
The protests were covered by several news organisations, including Al Jazeera, The Wire and National Herald.
We then found other videos of the protest uploaded on Twitter from the same day and spotted the man in a black coat with a megaphone who was also present in the viral video.
We can also see the buildings in the background similar to that in the viral video.
We came across more such videos which mentioned that the protest took place in the US in 2019. Incidentally, we also found a video posted by Tarek Fatah on 29 September 2019, where he was being stopped by the protesters outside the UN building.
Evidently, an old video from a protest rally against PM Modi in the US was falsely shared as people raising pro-Khalistan slogans during a farmers’ protest in London.
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