Claim: Video shows Maulana Fazl ur Rehman, chief of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), urging his party members to reach Islamabad and support Pakistan Tehreek Insaf’s protestors in October 2024.
Fact: The video of Rehman is from a press conference held in March 2022 and has no connection to either of PTI’s major rallies from October and November 2024.
On 7 October, a Facebook user posted a video (archive) showing a video of Maulana Fazl ur Rehman, a National Assembly member and leader of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), apparently speaking in support of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s rally in October. In the video he says:
“I will present my arrest alongside my friends. I want to say to my country, to party workers, to all party members, if you can reach Islamabad, or else in your cities block roads, close business of the country… Start the protest, come to the streets, and exercise your democratic right. We don’t believe in the Islamabad police’s terrorism.”
The text superimposed on the video states [translated from Urdu]: “Maulana Fazl Rehman’s message to the nation is that everyone should reach D-Chowk. It’s now or never. Support Imran Khan.”
We noticed the video, while posted in October 2024, seems to have gone viral around the end of November, indicating that the video was shared during or after PTI’s November protests in Islamabad. The comments on the post made by users in the last week suggest the video also went viral amid the PTI protests later in November.
PTI’s protests in Islamabad
On the night of 26 November security forces cracked down on Imran Khan’s supporters and PTI workers who had rallied to Islamabad to demand his release.
Khan’s party members say that at least 12 PTI supporters were killed in clashes with security forces, and several were injured. Four security personnel were also killed in the clashes. The Guardian, citing official sources, reported at least “17 civilian fatalities from army and paramilitary gunfire.”
However, exact numbers of deaths and injuries are still difficult to verify as authorities reportedly suppressed the evidence of deaths coming out of hospitals.
The government initially denied the death toll cited by the PTI, only to backtrack its stance a few days later and state that “four to five” were dead.
“The severe restrictions on assembly, movement and mobile and internet services as well as arbitrary detentions of thousands of protesters across Pakistan, particularly in Islamabad, are a grave violation of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, movement and expression,” said Amnesty International in a statement released on 26 November.
PTI protesters also rallied in Islamabad in early October 2024, demanding the release of Khan, which escalated into clashes between the security forces and his supporters.
Fact or Fiction?
Reverse-searching a keyframe of Maulana Fazl ur Rehman from the video in question did not yield any results. However, users commenting on the post pointed out that the video was old. According to one user, “This is the video of the time when PTI people illegally arrested the elected representatives of Jamiat Ulma Islam from Parliament House.”
We then conducted a keyword search, narrowing the timeframe to March 2022, and found that the video is actually from when Islamabad Police arrested members of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) and Ansarul Islam, a uniformed volunteer force of the JUI-F, from inside the parliament during Imran Khan’s government. JUI-F was part of the opposition when Khan was in power, and the arrests took place ahead of a no-confidence motion that the opposition had passed against the latter.
Dunya News, a Pakistani TV news channel, published this press conference further down in its article, titled “Parliament Lodges operation: JUI-F’s Ayubi among others arrested,” on 11 March 2022. From the timestamp 6:15 till the end of the video, Rehman’s statement matches what we hear in the post in question, when he asks his party workers to reach Islamabad.
Local TV news channel ARY News’ video report of the arrests from March 2022, captioned, “Fazal Ur Rehman Asks JUI-F Workers To Reach Islamabad,” also shows the JUI-F leader at the same press conference from timestamp 1:01 till 1:13. Though he is muted here, the visuals are identical to the aforementioned press-conference published by Dunya News, confirming that both show the presser held in March 2022.
Finally, Dawn’s article about the arrest of JUI-F party members on 11 March 2022 carried a photo of Rehman’s press conference as a cover (second from left), which matches scenes from videos by Dunya News and ARY News.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that a video of Maulana Fazlur Rehman from a press conference held in 2022 has been falsely linked to PTI’s recent protests in October.
Virality
The Facebook post racked up 2.4 million views and was liked 139,000 times.
It appeared on TikTok here.
Conclusion: The video of Maulana Fazlur Rehman is from a press conference held in March 2022 and has no connection to PTI’s rallies in October and November 2024.
Background image in cover photo: Dunya News
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