Old and unrelated videos are being shared as related to the ongoing farmers' protest - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
December 15, 2020
A post with a video collage showing Sikh protesters raising pro-Khalistan slogans in one video and an elderly man speaking to a reporter making anti-India comments the other video of is being widely circulated across social media platforms in the backdrop of farmers’ protest against the new farm laws. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Sikh protesters raising pro-Khalistan slogans and making anti-India comments during the ongoing farm protests.
Fact: The video of demonstrators raising pro-Khalistan slogans is actually from protests which were organized back in 2019 outside UN headquarters in New York when Modi was delivering UNGA speech. The other video in which an elderly man was seen making anti-India comments is actually from Pakistan. These videos have nothing to do with the ongoing farmers’ protest. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Video 1 (Left):
Reverse image search of screen shots of the video in the post led us to a 2019 Facebook post which shared a similar yet high resolution video.
Further, on careful observation of the video in the 2019 Facebook post, we can clearly spot placards with Modi’s name superimposed on the American flag and New York written on some placards.
Taking a cue from this Google search with relevant keywords led us to few 2019 news articles which reported the protesters rally for human rights in Kashmir outside the UNGA in New York when Modi was delivering his speech. Another news article which reported the same can be read here.
Further search with relevant keywords on yielded us few social media posts which shared videos related to the protests outside UNGA, coinciding with the time period of Modi’s 2019 UNGA speech. In these videos, we can spot placards similar to the one in the post, and even the building in the background is similar to the one in the video in the post. The protesters in the video can be seen wearing t-shirts with ‘New York City Protest at the UN’ written on them. All these establish that the video is related to the protest rally outside UNGA headquarters in New York while Modi was delivering his speech back in 2019 and the video has nothing to do with the ongoing farmers’ protest.
Video 2 (Right):
Reverse image search of screenshots of the video led us to a 2019 news article which carried an image similar to the visuals of the video. According to the article, this image is actually a screenshot from a video in which an elderly man was expressing his views regarding the opening of the Kartarpur corridor while speaking on a street talk show by Naya Pakistan, a YouTube channel.
Taking a cue from the news article, YouTube search with relevant keywords led us to the lengthier version of the video from which this excerpt is extracted. According to the video, the elderly man made Anti-India comments when a reporter sought his views on the opening of the Kartarpur corridor. With all this, we can clearly establish that the video has nothing to do with the ongoing farmers’ protest.
In the light of the ongoing farmer’s protest against the news farm laws, posts like these are being circulated on social media platforms with misleading claims.
To sum it up, these unrelated old videos are being shared as Sikh protesters raising pro-Khalistan slogans and making anti-India comments in the ongoing farmers’ protest.