India’s notorious neighbor Pakistan is not leaving its habit of fueling trouble in India even at the time of crisis. A recent report of Delhi Police clarifies the facts. Pakistan is involved in provoking Indian Muslims to break lockdown measures. It using digital space to make a dent in India’s fight against COVID-19.
Pakistan is running a ‘deliberate disinformation campaign’ on social media. This comes after Pakistani social media handles had spread fake news during the Delhi riots in February. Delhi police has presented its detailed research report with it’s finding.
The report is titled Project Digital Vaccine: Weaponising Disinformation to Destroy COVID19 Lockdowns. The report by Delhi Police’s cyber experts has revealed some shocking facts. “Several of the videos (circulated on social media in the last one week) appear to be shot in Pakistan and the Middle East but audio in Hindi has been superimposed to create a Hindi video“, says the report.
“Videos of Muslims refusing to get themselves tested and beating medical personnel are also being spread with a request to do the same and inspire other Muslim brothers. These disinformation/fake news videos watched by millions of users may end up influencing the thoughts of a large section of people in the targeted religion”, adds the report. Apps like TikTok which have millions of followers have been the core platform for this.
“Initial investigation reveals hundreds of high impact professional videos with disinformation/fake news are being spread to stoke religious emotions in Muslim community against social distancing and lockdown guidelines“, reveals the report. The videos are created especially to target the Indian audience. The connection with Tablighi Jamat has also been explored.
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“YouTube channels with lakhs of subscribers have uploaded videos and audio of sermons of Maulana (Muhammad) Saad, asking Muslims to make fun of social distancing and to ignore government directions”, points the report. The revelations of the report clearly show that how digital space can be manipulated.
The use of such tactics by Pakistan is nothing but ‘proxy war’. At this time the citizens also have to use their ‘common sense’ to check a forwarded video and content. This could be the back-breaker for such low efforts of Pakistan.
