Claim: Pictures show that blockages have been placed on roads to stop Imran Khan’s 25 May 2022 Long March.
Fact: Although blockades were actually put in place on roads leading to Islamabad to disrupt the long march, the pictures in question are not from this march. In fact, these pictures are from a similar event that took place in 2016.
Fact or fiction?
A collage of three pictures of blockades on different roads and motorways is being shared to show that the government is stopping marchers from reaching Islamabad. Although the news was factually correct as the government did attempt to disrupt marchers, these pictures are from 2016.
The top picture in the collage is from 29 October 2016 when Imran Khan asked PTI party workers to gather in Islamabad to protest against then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after he was named in the Panama Papers. Here is the link to the original image.
Similarly, this news story includes the other two images which are also from October 2016.
Virality
A simple Facebook search shows dozens of results with recent posts carrying the old pictures with examples here, here, and here.
According to a CrowdTangle search conducted by Soch Fact Check, the search term “یہ تصویر واضع کرتی ہے کہ گیارہ پارٹیاں صرف ایک شخص کے ڈر سے کانپ رہی ہیں۔ [This picture proves that 11 parties are trembling due to fear of one person] turned up 105 posts on Facebook which received 14,779 interactions over the seven-day period leading up to 30 May 2022. The interactions peaked on 24 May 2022, a day ahead of the Long March. The oldest post also appeared on this date.
The analysis revealed that PTI Lover’s post is performing 5.54x better than other similar posts with 66 likes and 185 shares. Other posts that gained significant traction include Imran Khan Fans’ post with 3,200 likes and 1,900 shares and Trending Urdu News’ post with 1,600 likes and 1,200 shares, among others.
Conclusion: Although posts saying that blockades were put in place to disrupt Imran Khan’s recent long march are true, the pictures accompanying many of these posts are from October 2016.