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| - Fact Check: These protestors chanting 'Azaadi' has NOTHING to do with Pak-Baloch issue
Video of a student protest against the ban on education and work for women in Afghanistan was shared falsely as footage of Baloch activists demanding 'azadi'.
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India Today Fact Check
This video does not show Baloch nationalists asking for freedom from Pakistan, but a student protest in Pakistan against the Taliban’s ban on the education of Afghan women.
Baloch separatists have been fighting for control of their land for a long time now, maintaining that they have been economically marginalised by the Pakistani government. Videos of protests and demonstrations often surface on social media showing Baloch activists demanding recognition of their sovereignty and rights.
The year 2022 was particularly dreadful for Balochistan as the Pakistan army reportedly tortured 187 people, forcibly disappeared 629, and extrajudicially killed 195 according to an annual report released by Paank, a human rights organisation of the Baloch National Movement.
Amid this, a video making the rounds on social media supposedly shows people from Balochistan demanding freedom from Pakistan. The video shows a woman, along with several other people, clapping hands and chanting “Azaadi”.
A person shared this video writing, “We demand azadi, Free Balochistan from the occupation of the Pak Army, and an end to barbarism. This is the voice of the Balochs, and we'll not allow Pakistan to abuse our rights any longer.” Another wrote, “The voice of freedom from oppressed Balochis is reverberating in not only in Islamabad but also in the freedom loving world. And the free world is shouting ‘azaadi’ for you. Free Balochistan.” Archives of such posts can be found here, here, and here.
AFWA found that this video shows a protest in Pakistan against the ban on the education of women in Afghanistan and not a call for secession from the nation.
AFWA Probe
A reverse search of the keyframes from the viral video took us to the same video tweeted on January 1 by Habib Khan, founder of the non-governmental organisation Afghan Peace Watch (APW). According to his tweet, the video showed Pashtun students in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa demonstrating in support of Afghan women.
Further, we found an extended version of the video tweeted by Muhammad Faheem, a journalist based in Peshawar. His caption in Urdu stated that the video showed a student protest at the University of Peshawar against the ban on education and work for women in Afghanistan. Peshawar is the capital of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Using this clue, we found Pakistani and Afghani media outlets reporting that this video was a protest at the University of Peshawar in response to the Taliban’s closure of universities for Afghani women.
BBC Pashto on December 26, 2022, also covered this protest and shared videos from different angles. The protestors, in this video, could be seen holding placards that said, “Ban Taliban”, and, “Let Afghan Girls Learn.”
While sharing the video on Twitter, Hum News, a Pakistani Urdu news channel, tagged Jamaima Afridi. We headed over to the profile and found that she was the woman seen in the video. Afridi is a journalist and a women’s rights activist based in Peshawar.
Afridi also tweeted the viral video, along with another video from this protest, writing: “Today I organised a protest against the ban on women's access to education, movement, and work in Afghanistan. Students from several unions, activists, and Afghan students were invited to participate in a protest against these barbaric actions of the Taliban.”
Afridi shared several other videos and photos of herself protesting against the regressive decision of the Taliban government on her social media profile.
Thus, it is clear that a video of students protesting the Taliban’s ban on the education of women, and not Baloch nationalists demanding freedom from Pakistan.
(Written by Sanjana Saxena)
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