Video shows protest against bill at Kashmir assembly, not Muslim persecution
A video has recently spread on Facebook claiming that a Muslim leader threw papers in front of the Speaker in India’s parliament to protest the refusal to accept a letter demanding an end to the persecution of Muslims. However, Dismislab’s fact-check found the claim to be false. The video shows a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) protesting over a bill to regularize daily-wage workers in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.
On October 24, the video was posted from a profile in a Facebook group named “Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami.” The 17-second video shows a man dressed in pink throwing papers. In the next scene, he is seen holding papers in his hand and speaking in an agitated manner. Text on the video reads, “Islam will be victorious one day” and “Insha’Allah (God willing).” The post carried the same words: “Islam will be victorious one day, Insha’Allah.”
In the background of the video, a voice says, “Salute to you, brother. A Muslim leader shook the parliament in India. He had sent a letter to parliament to stop the oppression of Muslims in India. Because that letter was not accepted, the Muslim leader threw papers in front of the Speaker. Bravo! Brave young man. Keep up the protest like this. One day victory will surely come. Insha’Allah.”
As of the publication of this report, the post had received more than 650 reactions. It had been shared more than 180 times.
The video had also spread with the same claim about five months earlier. It was then shared from multiple Facebook pages (1, 2) and groups (1, 2). One of these, a profile named “Mohammod official 2.0,” drew more than 10 million views on the video with the same claim.
To verify the claim, Dismislab conducted a reverse image search on keyframes of the video. This led to a video report of the same scene on the YouTube channel News Insider 24×7. The title of the post, published on April 1, read (translated), “Uproar in Assembly; MLA Waheed ur Rehman Para Tears Bill in Protest Against Omar Abdullah.”
The video description said MLA Para tore up a bill related to daily-wage workers to protest the Omar Abdullah government.
Omar Abdullah is the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, and Waheed ur Rehman Para is an MLA of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), an opposition party in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Neither the video’s title nor its description mentions the persecution of Muslims or any letter.
A search using relevant keywords found published reports on the incident. A Deccan Herald report stated that on April 1, a bill proposed to regularize more than 100,000 daily-wage and temporary workers was rejected by a “yes/no” vote in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly. The bill had been proposed by PDP MLA Waheed Para, who along with other opposition members, protested the rejection and walked out of the chamber.
In other words, the video is not a protest against the persecution of Muslims. It shows a protest over a daily-wage workers bill in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.
