A video showing a group of men raising pro-Khalistan slogans and tearing the Indian national flag is being shared on social media with the claim that it is a video of Indian farmers desecrating the flag.
The claim comes shortly after violence broke out in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri on 3 October, where eight people lost their lives, of which four were farmers.
However, we found that the video did not show farmers from India. The people tearing the national flag in the video were a few of hundreds of protesters that had gathered outside the United Nations’ building in New York on 26 September, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to address the UN General Assembly that day.
CLAIM
The video is being shared on social media platforms with claims in different languages identifying the group as farmers.
An archived version of this tweet can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND
We came across a Facebook post by a Facebook page called 'NRI Herald', which posted the same clip on 3 October.
The page stated that the incident showed “Khalistani Sikh extremists” in New York during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit.
Using keywords such as “Khalistan protesters PM Modi UNGA”, we came across a news report by Punjab News Express (which carried a photograph of the event) regarding the incident, dated 25 September 2021.
The report noted that protests took place outside UN Headquarters on 25 September.
(Photo: Punjab News Express)
The reports noted that the protesters were from four different groups who were present to protest different causes.
We also came across a livestream of the event uploaded to a YouTube channel called TV84, where many protesters spoke about why they were there.
In this livestream, around the 36-minute mark, we spotted two of the people seen in the claim video. We can see that the shirt patterns and turban colours of these two people match in both frames.
We were able to match two of the three people seen in the claim.
(Photo: Twitter/YouTube/Altered by The Quint)
We also found another picture of the two protestors on a website called 'IndicaNews' and could notice '50 United Nations' written in the background. We then looked up Google Maps for the area and found that the protests did take place in New York.
Image created to show that the protest happened in New York.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
Evidently, a video of pro-Khalistan protesters ripping apart the Indian national flag in New York, USA was wrongly shared to claim that it showed Indian farmers.
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