PARIS: Agence France-Presse, a French-based international news agency headquartered in Paris, has exposed baseless propaganda launched by Indian media against Pakistan at the behest of Modi government.
The AFP in its fresh report titled “Video of woman assaulted in Pakistan shared with false claim about violence against Hindus” said that a video being circulated in Hindi-language social media posts that claim it shows a brutal assault against a Hindu woman in Pakistan. ‘This is false’, the AFP report said and added that the footage being circulated since January 2022 is about a land dispute in Pakistan.
As per AFP, the video was tweeted by the verified account of Indian media outlet Zee Hindustan on August 27, 2022 with misleading subtitles that ‘atrocities against Hindus are not stopping in Pakistan.’Â The French news agency proved with facts that the dispute was between two Muslim families based in Sialkot, and had nothing to do with any Hindu woman.
“The victim’s relative told AFP that the dispute was between two Muslim families.” “The video was tweeted here by the verified account of Indian media outlet Zee Hindustan on August 27, 2022.”
“Atrocities against Hindus are not stopping in Pakistan. A Hindu woman was beaten up with sticks over a minor issue. There’s no justice for Hindu victims,” reads the Hindi-language tweet.
The report compiled by Devesh Mishra, AFP India, said that the video racked up hundreds of thousands of views after being circulated in Hindi-language social media posts that claim it shows a brutal assault against a Hindu woman in Muslim-majority Pakistan. “This is false. The footage has circulated in news reports since January 2022 about a woman being assaulted over a land dispute in Pakistan.”
The one-minute 20-second video, which shows a group of people physically assaulting a woman, was viewed more than 395,000 times before it was removed.
“A combination of reverse image and keyword searches found part of the video included in this report published by Pakistani TV channel Geo News on January 9, 2022.”
“Elderly woman in Sialkot publically tortured over ‘land dispute’,” reads the report’s headline. Sialkot is a district in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
“The elderly woman told Geo News that the attack was sparked by a longstanding land dispute.” “The culprits banged my house door, forced their way in, and dragged me through the streets to the public square where they tortured me”, she was quoted as saying.
“According to Pakistan’s English-language newspaper Dawn, the AFP quoted, the incident happened at Palura Kalan village in Sialkot, and the victim was identified as Munawar Kanwal.”
“Kanwal’s nephew, Matloob Alam, told an AFP journalist in Pakistan that the land dispute was between two Muslim families.”
“There is a land dispute between the two families, both are Muslims,” Alam said. “Our family wants to build a passage on a piece of land, but the other family does not allow us.”
In an interview with Indian fact-checking website BOOM Live, Munawar Kanwal said: “Those who attacked me were Muslims, I am also a devout Muslim.”
AFP previously debunked a false claim that another video shows “people abducting a Hindu woman in Pakistan to force her to convert to Islam”, the report concluded.
