Claim: An image of a large crowd of people gathered at a venue at night allegedly depicts a recent rally held by former Prime Minister Imran Khan and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) workers in Sialkot.
Fact: The image is not from PTI’s rally but rather from a March 2022 election rally in the Philippines.
On 14 May 2022, Facebook page PTI Faisalabad shared an image with the following Urdu caption:
سیالکوٹ جلسہ
دیکھ کر ایک نیا جوش وجذبہ پیدا ہوگیا
کامیاب جلسہ کرنے پر سیالکوٹ کارکنان اور کپتان کا سچا سپاہی عثمان ڈار کو خراج تحسين پیش کرتے ہیں۔
Translated into English, the caption reads, “Sialkot meeting. Seeing this, a new enthusiasm was created. The Sialkot workers and the captain’s true soldier pay homage to Usman Dar for holding a successful rally.”
Fact or fiction?
Posts sharing the image were flagged on Facebook as potentially false by multiple users.
To investigate the source of the image, we conducted a Google Reverse Image Search, which allowed us to trace the image back to a tweet posted by the Philippine government television network People’s Television Network (PTV) on March 22, 2022.
The picture is credited to Philippine’s political party Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (LAKAS-CMD). The Tagalog-language tweet translated into English reads, “Drone shot of the UniTeam campaign rally in Gen. Trias Sports Complex, Cavite tonight (March 22).”
Complete drone footage of the rally is available on YouTube here.
The same image has also been shared here, with the claim that it depicts a rally held by PTI in Gujranwala
The claim that the image depicts a PTI rally has also been debunked by AFP Fact Check.
Soch Fact Check previously refuted claims regarding a rally allegedly held in the United States in support of Imran Khan, and wrote about old images being reshared with the claim that they depict PTI’s April 2022 Lahore rally.
Conclusion: The viral image showing a large gathering of people is not from a recent PTI rally in Sialkot, but rather from a March 2022 election campaign rally held in the Philippines.