Areeba Fatima

Areeba Fatima is a senior fact-checker and investigative reporter. She studied Anthropology at Lahore University of Management Sciences. She has also worked with Fact Focus on an Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation, the Suisse Secrets. She loves working with large datasets to extract meaningful information. She is interested in internet governance, financial crime, political corruption and emerging technologies.

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  Claim: Pakistani celebrity Hadiqa Kiyani built 370 homes, two maternity centers and 200 mosques for  survivors in the aftermath of the 2022 monsoon floods in Balochistan, Pakistan.  Fact: Singer and actress Hadiqa Kiyani did not build 200, but two mosques for the flood survivors in Balochistan.  On 16 October 2023, a Facebook page called […]

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Claim: British-Pakistani men are disproportionately involved in grooming and sexually exploiting young girls across the United Kingdom. Fact: The claim is misleading, according to a report published by the Home Office and the Independent Press Standards Organisation. There is no reliable evidence to suggest that British-Pakistani men are more likely to commit such crimes than men […]

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Claim: Pro-Palestine  students at Stanford University wrote an antisemitic message saying, “Come chat about how Jewish babies should be burned alive” in chalk on the ground while staging a sit-in on campus.  Fact: The chalking was not done by students staging the sit-in, but by a member of the Jewish community who was trying to […]

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Claim: PML-N leader, Ataullah Tarar attempted to persuade people in his constituency to vote for him by saying, “We’ve made an agreement (with the army to come into power). If you vote for someone else, your vote will be wasted. You won’t have any say in our government.” after which he was pelted with stones […]

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Claim: Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia announced at the 2023 OIC meeting that they wanted the people of Kashmir to attain freedom and condemned the Indian forces’ operations in Kashmir as oppressive. The Hindustan Times in India published articles expressing severe concerns regarding the alleged statement by Mohammad bin Salman’s government and countries like the […]

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Claim: Maulana Fazl ur Rahman has departed to Gaza with aid  and is the first leader from a Muslim country  to do so.  Fact: Maulana Fazl ur Rahman has not left for Gaza, as confirmed by members of his party, the Jamaat e Ulema e Islami (F) – JUI(F). On 5 November 2023, an Instagram […]

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Claim: Canada has cancelled 28,000 work visas for skilled workers coming from India to Canada due to recent tensions between the two countries and has decided to issue these work visas to Pakistani skilled workers instead. Fact: There is no evidence to support the claim. The Canadian government and immigration authorities have not made any […]

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Claim: An Israeli writer and government advisor claimed a hospitalised Palestinian man is acting and faking his injuries as he was exposed after he posted a video of himself  appearing perfectly healthy a few days later Fact: The claim links  two unrelated videos,  filmed at different times and places. Most importantly, the hospitalised man in […]

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Claim: A series of images show a Palestinian girl being rescued  by three different people, each one from a different day, from locations that are 50 km apart from each other.   Fact: The pictures do not show a Palestinian girl. They were taken in Aleppo, Syria in the aftermath of a bombing that took place […]

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Claim: The Pakistani government has asked all banks to stop accepting donations for Palestine. A leaked internal memo from Bank Alfalah is being used to claim that the bank does not accept donations for the account of the Palestinian government.  Fact: The Pakistani government has not asked banks to stop accepting donations for Palestine. Donations […]

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Claim: Taylor Swift’s Eras tour film was cancelled in Israel over the Gaza conflict. Fact: The film is being screened in Israel as scheduled. The screenshot shown in the video is authentic, but it was caused by a technical glitch on the website, not by a deliberate decision to pull the film. On 7 November […]

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Claim: A McDonald’s outlet in Peshawar was temporarily closed after a massive boycott due to McDonalds’ pro-IDF stance in the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Fact: The McDonald’s outlet in Peshawar was not closed, but was open and operational as usual, according to local sources and online reviews. The claim is false. On 5 November 2023, […]

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