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| - Fact Check: Documentary on Myanmar rebels spliced with drone shots to create anti-Kuki propaganda
"Kuki terrorists use drones to find out the position of police and get ready to attack," claimed a video linking it to Manipur violence. The video was misleading.
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India Today Fact Check
While the drone footage indeed shows different areas of Manipur, the video of the young men flying drones was taken from a 2022 documentary on Myanmar's rebel Chinland Defense Force.
A young man in a black combat rig held a drone camera in his hand. On top of a hill, overlooking a magnificent valley, where bursts of sun tore through the thick clouds, he released the device, which flew into the grey skies. What followed was almost six minutes of drone footage providing a bird’s eye view of idyllic villages, vast swathes of farms, and lush greenery.
“Kuki terrorists use drones to find out the position of police and get ready to attack. Please be careful all the Metei [sic],” read the title of a Facebook post containing this video, shared on May 30, at around two in the afternoon.
India Today found that the drone footage did indeed show different areas of Manipur. The video of the young men flying drones, however, was taken from a 2022 documentary on Myanmar's rebel Chinland Defense Force.
Violence erupted in Manipur on May 3, after thousands of people from various tribal groups protested plans to give the majority Meitei community the status of a Scheduled Tribe. Since then, in violent clashes largely between the ethnic Meitei and Kuki communities, scores have died and thousands have been displaced.
Chief Minister N Biren Singh said on May 29 that around 40 “Kuki militants”, who were allegedly targeting civilians, were killed by security forces, though he did not specify when. This was after more violence broke out in several areas on the intervening night of May 27 and May 28.
The ‘militants’ with drones
The first few seconds of the video in question show, aside from the young man releasing the drone, a bunch of other young men in similar attire. One could be heard saying off-screen, “They may still be there, so be careful.” Another could be seen holding a walkie-talkie that crackled the words “Copy that” out. After the drone flies off, a couple of others could be seen holding a controller and navigating the drone.
This section of the video is not from Manipur at all. In fact, it’s not even from India. A reverse search of its screenshots led us to a short documentary by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from August 18, 2022. Titled, “On the Frontline of Myanmar's Forgotten Civil War,” the film documented life at the “resistance army’s mountain stronghold as it wages war on Myanmar’s military dictatorship.
We found the introductory shots of the viral clip at around the 15-minute mark in the documentary. ABC reporter Matt Davis explained how the young soldiers in the Chinland Defense Force — a rebel group formed in response to the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état to protect Chin State from the military junta — used commercially available drones to monitor the movements of the Tatmadaw or the Myanmar military.
The young man who was holding the drone was stationed at Thantlang, a town in the hills of north-western Myanmar. Thantlang is more than 400 km away from Churachandpur in Manipur, the epicenter of the violence that broke out on May 3, and more than 450 km away from the state’s capital, Imphal.
This can be seen on a board proclaiming “Thantlang Battalion” in black handpainted letters. The young man with the drone, per Davis, was a “former journalist who used to fly his drone to snap photos for the local newspaper,” who “now uses it to hover over Tatmadaw positions up and down the valley.”
But what of the drone shots that followed? While the ABC documentary contained a vast array of drone shots, none of them matched the ones we saw in the viral video.
Ripped off from Manipur journalist's shoot
A simple search for drone footage from Manipur led us to the YouTube channel “Lamka Talk”. A May 29 video there titled “Drone footage shows involvement of state police commandos in attacking Tribal villages in Manipur” contained all the shots we found in the viral clip.
Lamka Talk is a small news outfit based in Lamka, a town in Churachandpur. C Lian Langel, who runs Lamka Talk, spoke to India Today about this video. He said that he shot the video on May 28 and 29 in the villages of Changpikot and Kangvai and the town of Sugnu. A comparison of Langel’s video and the viral one can be seen below.
Langel told India Today that he attempted to capture the security forces’ alleged involvement in violence against civilians in these areas. One of the drones he used to find evidence, he said, had since been shot down.
On May 28, clashes were reported from several areas in Manipur including at Sugnu in Kakching, Kangvi in Churachandpur, Kangchup in Imphal West, Sagolmang in Imphal East, Nungoipokpi in Bishenpur, Khurkhul in Imphal West and YKPI in Kangpokpi. Thangminlen Kipgen of the Manipur Kuki Innpi, a Kuki civil body, told Outlook magazine that seven Kuki people were killed in the clashes that day. He added that it was “confusing what the CM means when he says 40 terrorists” and that the people killed were all village guard volunteers who were armed with licensed guns.
(With input from Sanjana Saxena)
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