Claim: A picture shows a sea of containers that were put in place ahead of the PTI’s November march, blocking a road in Islamabad.
Fact: The picture is doctored and does not accurately represent the security arrangements and blockades that were put in place ahead of the PTI’s march.
A photo showing a sea of containers went viral on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter) on 23 and 24 November 2024. The post from Facebook, which makes a reference to the former premier, is shown below:
Source: Facebook.
From the time jailed former premier Imran Khan issued a renewed call for a protest to his supporters, tensions had arisen in the capital city of Islamabad between the opposition and government ahead of PTI’s 24 November 2024 rally. In particular, the blockage of roads with containers to dissuade protestors from gathering received considerable online attention before the protests took place. News sources, including Dawn, ARY, The Express Tribune, and Associated Press, all reported that massive containers had been placed along travel routes leading to, and within, the city of Islamabad.
Protestors reached Islamabad “in the early hours of Tuesday”, and after a series of clashes with security forces, they were seen to disperse late at night. This led to the protest being temporarily suspended the next day, as seen here and here.
Fact or Fiction?
Despite the picture’s virality, Soch Fact Check came across a post on X that hinted at it being fake.
Taking cues from this, we ran the picture through online AI tools that detect deepfakes and found that it is not an authentic image. TrueMedia.org revealed that there is “substantial evidence of manipulation” in the image. The result from sightengine’s AI detection tool claimed the image was “likely AI-generated”, a screenshot of which is shown below:
Similarly, Hive Moderation’s AI detection tool gave a rating of 99.9%, saying that the image is “likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content”. A screenshot of this is shown below:
Deeper inspection of the image also reveals certain irregularities with the people and the cars around the containers on the road.
Zooming into the left of the image reveals irregular human shapes. The figure on the extreme left also appears to be disproportionate compared to the rest of the picture.
Zooming in towards the right reveals an unrealistically uneven and sloped road, as is visible in the image below. Moreover, the cars appear blurred, misshapen or distorted, with instances of unidentifiable objects around them, like the long grey-and-orange object in the top-left of the picture:
Though we cannot confirm whether the image is AI-generated or a deepfake, Soch Fact Check concludes that it is not authentic. It seems to have evident signs of manipulation and hence, we rate this claim as false.
Virality
On X, the photo is seen here, here, here, and here.
On Instagram, the photo is seen here, here, here, and here.
On YouTube, the photo is seen here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the photo is seen here, here, and here.
On Threads, the photo is seen here and here.
Conclusion: A photo claiming to show containers that were put in place ahead of PTI’s November protests in Islamabad is fake.
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Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera
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