Does This Video Show People Protesting Against the Government in Pakistan? No!

Neither is this video recent nor is it related to Pakistan. It shows people gathering to see the Pope in Timor-Leste

A video of a massive crowd gathered on the streets is going viral on the internet as recent visuals of people protesting in Pakistan's Islamabad against the Shehbaz Sharif-led government.

What have users said?: The clip was shared with a caption that said, "BREAKING : Pakistan Army canceled leave of all of its soldiers as lakhs of PTI supporters are marching towards Islamabad against Shehbaz Sharif Govt & Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir from different parts of Pakistan..."

The above post had garnered around 61 thousand views on the platform. Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.

What are the facts?: The video could be traced back to September of this year, and shows visuals from Pope Francis' visit to East Timor, also referred to as Timor-Leste.

How did we find that out?: We performed a reverse image search using the help of Google Lens and found the same visuals uploaded on a Facebook handle named 'Nigerian Catholics'.

• The video was published on 12 September 2024 and its caption said, "Pope Francis Welcome historic visit to Timoleste a Country with 100% Catholic root."

News report: A video report published by Reuters showed visuals from the Pope's visit to East Timor. It was published on 10 September and it was titled, "Pope Francis draws nearly half of East Timor population to open-air Mass | REUTERS."

Comparing visuals: On comparing the keyframes from the Facebook video to visuals available in the report by Reuters, we found that both of them are from the same incident.

Geolocating the visuals: Team WebQoof managed to geolocate the exact location where the viral video was filmed, using the help of the 'street view' option.

• The available view is of September and was shared by a user named 'KB'.

A similar theme: Our team had debunked the same video in September, when it was falsely linked to a rally by All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in Mumbai, Maharashtra.

• You can read our fact-check here.

Conclusion: The viral claim is false as the video is old and unrelated to Pakistan.

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