Claim: Images shows protesters and the army being called in to maintain law and order during PTI’s November 2024 march in Islamabad.
Fact: Three out of four images in the post have no connection to PTI’s November 2024 march or the ensuing clashes between the demonstrators and security forces in Islamabad.
On 26 November, an X user posted (archive) four photos claiming to show PTI’s protests in Islamabad. The caption states:
“#BreakingNews Pakistan Army Deployed Under Article 245 ; Shoot-on-Sight Orders Issued Against Miscreants. Security Forces Mobilized to Counter Terrorism and Restore Order. Four Rangers and Two Police Officers Martyred in #PTI Miscreants Attacks; Over 100 Police Injured, Many Critical. #Pakistan #PTIProtest #Islamabad”
The overall impression of the post is that these images are from the November PTI protests held in Islamabad. This fact-check will be verifying the origin of the three out of the four images in the post:
- The first image, showing a vehicle behind two protesters, one of whom in blue dress has covered his head with a PTI flag.
- The second image, showing a PTI protester holding and pointing a gun upwards.
- The fourth image in the X post of soldiers travelling in vehicles after Article 245 was invoked on 26 November and the army was called in to maintain law and order.
PTI’s Islamabad protests
Thousands of Imran Khan’s supporters marched to Islamabad on 24 November to demand the release of the former prime minister, who has been in jail since August 2023.
The protest call from Khan, asking his supporters to demand his release, as well as the release of his supporters, came in early November.
Pakistani authorities placed shipping containers to block protestors’ entry into the capital while social media platforms faced disruptions amid the protests. According to news reports, security forces also fired teargas at the protestors.
The authorities arrested approximately 1,000 protestors as of 27 November. Some sources report that clashes between security forces and demonstrators have killed eight, including four security personnel and four protestors, and several others have been injured. However, exact numbers of deaths and injuries are difficult to verify at this time due to the ongoing internet shutdown in the capital.
According to a recent report by The Guardian, authorities and senior government officials have attempted to suppress the total death toll and forcefully remove hospital records. “The doctor, who requested anonymity for his safety, said there had been an attempt to cover up any fatalities,” the publication reported. Official sources who spoke to The Guardian added that there have been 17 civilian casualties and hundreds more had been injured.
“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.
A crackdown by security forces dispersed protestors on Tuesday night, which was followed by the PTI calling off the protests “temporarily,” in the early hours of 27 November, citing that protesters were brutally injured by the law enforcement at D-Chowk.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse-image search for each image below and found that three of them had no connection to recent clashes between security forces and demonstrators.
Image 1: This image shows a vehicle behind two protestors, one of whom in blue dress has covered his head with a PTI flag.
Express Tribune published this photo under article “PTI seeks SC aid for May 9 footage recover” on 9 May 2023. Iranian Students’ News Agency published the image in May 2023 and the caption says “translated from Persian via Google Translate], “Islamabad called the army to pacify the country after the arrest of Imran Khan.” Soch Fact Check thus concludes the image is from 9 May 2023.
Image 2: This photo allegedly shows a PTI protestor holding and pointing a gun upwards.
The Frontier Post carried this photo two years ago under the article “PTI protests continue; 4 dead in Peshawar.” The original Getty Images’ stock photo, an exact match of the image, appeared on 10 May 2023. The caption states “Clashes continue between Pakistani security forces and supporters of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) during a protest following former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s arrest in Peshawar, Pakistan.” Therefore, the image has no connection to the recent Islamabad protests.
Image 4: The final image in the post shows vehicles carrying armed soldiers. The caption suggests that the image is from when the army was called in to maintain law and order on 26 November 2024.
The image in question was carried by publications as early as 2015. The Express Tribune published the image on 15 April 2015 in an article about the failure of National Action Plan. The caption of the photo states “A photo of Pakistan Army” and is credited to “AFP.”
It also appeared in an article about counter-terrorism operations carried out by the military in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in September 2017, which further confirms the image is not related to the recent protests.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes the X user has misleadingly linked old images to the recent PTI protests in Islamabad.
Virality
The X post garnered 20,600 views and was liked 161 times.
Conclusion: The post is misleading as it includes old photos, suggesting they are from the recent protests in Islamabad. Three out of the four images in the post are entirely unrelated to PTI’s November 2024 march and the ensuing clashes between the demonstrators and security forces.
Background image in cover photo: Dawn
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