Video Shows Iranian Nomadic Family, Not 'Illegal Refugees' From Myanmar

The viral video shows a Kurdish nomadic family moving with their belongings along Mount Dena in Iran.

Fact-Check: A video from Iran has gone viral with a false claim that it shows people from Myanmar illegally entering Manipur.

(Photo: The Quint)

A video showing people moving from one place to another along with children and some household items has gone viral on the internet. The video shows them scaling difficult terrains and climbing mountains along with their children and bags.

What is the claim: Those sharing the video have claimed that it shows people from Myanmar entering India illegally.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

(Archives of more such posts can be found here and here.)

What is the truth: The video is from Iran and reportedly shows a nomadic Kurdish family climbing the Dena Mountain.

A little context:

• While addressing the ongoing violence in Manipur, Union Home Minister Amit Shah alleged that the conflict in Myanmar led to many Kukis crossing over from Myanmar into Manipur.

• He further added that this influx of people from Myanmar led to anxieties among the majority Meitei population in Manipur.

• Shah's statements on Manipur received criticism from all 10 Kuki MLAs from Manipur, including those with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Mizoram's sole Rajya Sabha representative K Vanlalvena, who is also an NDA ally.

How did we find out the truth: We divided the video into multiple keyframes and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.

• While going through the search results, we came across a version of the video uploaded on the Facebook page of an Iraqi TV channel called YARAN.

• The caption of the video, when translated from Kurdish to English using Google Translate said it showed Kurdish people in a village.

• We expanded the reverse image search with related keywords and found a longer version of the video on a YouTube channel named DENA. The video was published on 12 March.

• The caption of the video said it shows the life of Iranian nomads.

• The YouTube channel carried several other videos of other nomadic families moving with their belongings along the Mount Dena, which is a sub-range within the southern Zagros Mountains in Iran.

• Several nomadic tribes live in area, such as the Ghasga’i, the Bakhtiari, the Kurds, the Shahsavan, etc.

• We compared the viral video with the video uploaded on DENA's YouTube channel.

Comparison of the viral video with the original video.

(Source: Facebook/DENA/YouTube/Altered by The Quint)

Conclusion: Evidently, this viral video shows a nomadic family in Iran and not people from Myanmar illegally entering India.

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