New Delhi: A video clip of a protest rally with “Islam Zindabad” slogan playing in the background is getting viral on social media with the claim that this rally took place in Kolkata, West Bengal.
The Claim
This same video is shared by multiple accounts on different social media platform with the caption: “This is not Karachi, Kashmir or Kerala. No, this chant of “Islam Zindabad” is being raised in Kolkata, capital city of #MamataBanerjee-ruled #WestBengal !”. A Bengali song can be heard with lyrics “Islam Zindabad” in the background of the viral video.
Pakistani-Canadian writer Tarek Fatah tweeted this video on August 28 with the same caption.
A user named Md. Sujon Rana posted the same video on August 21 on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/118422429564268/videos/337552624049142/?t=0
The investigation
Newsroompost did some research and we found out that this claim along with the video to be misleading.
In a brief moment in the video, one of the protestors can be seen holding the flag of Bangladesh.
Apart from this, the placards held by the people in the video reads “Stop brutal genocide of Rohingya Muslims”. The acronym ‘ISCA BD’ is also visible on the placards, which stands for Islami Shasontantra Chhatra Andolan — an organisation based in Bangladesh.
We took some screenshots from the video and did the reverse image search, we found that several people have uploaded the viral video on YouTube.
When we did a keyword search on YouTube based on this information, we found the same video which had been uploaded three years ago on September 13, 2017. The video is titled, “Bangladesh Islami Andolon Bangladesh enclose Myanmar Embassy” and was uploaded by a channel called Spice InfoTube.
We also found news articles published on September 13, 2017, by The Financial Express and Bangladesh news portal Bangla News 24.
The Truth
A 3-year-old video from Bangladesh was shared online with claims that it was from West Bengal. The Kolkata Police had shared a screenshot of Tarek Fatah’s tweet clarifying that it was fake news.
#FakeNewsAlert
A video clip from Bangladesh is being falsely claimed to be from Kolkata. Legal action initiated. pic.twitter.com/v5MYLICKiI— Kolkata Police (@KolkataPolice) August 28, 2020
