WebQoof: Article on Tamil Autonomy in The Hindu is Plain Photoshop

A photoshopped image of a Hindu article on Tamil autonomy has been doing the rounds on social media recently.

CLAIM

An image on the front page of The Hindu, a national daily, has been doing the rounds on social media.

The image focuses on an article that urges people to vote for Sri Lanka’s United National Party, as its leader, the country’s ousted prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, had agreed to grant autonomy to the minority Tamil community.

This comes amidst the ongoing political turmoil in the island nation as Sri Lanka's parliament was dissolved on 9 November and snap polls were announced to be held on 5 January next year.

THE TRUTH

The image is clearly photoshopped, as is evident by the varying pixelation around the byline in the article and the variable spacing between columns.

Meera Srinivasan, a Colombo-based journalist with The Hindu, also confirmed that the article was indeed fake.

“This page, being shared by some on social media, has nothing to do with The Hindu. Someone decided to photoshop a fake news item with an image of our masthead. They got our font wrong, and have done a bad job of photoshop-ing as well,” Srinivasan said on Twitter.

#Srilanka: This page, being shared by some on social media, has nothing to do with @the_hindu. Someone decided to Photoshop a fake news item with an image of our masthead. They got our font wrong, and have done a bad job of photoshop-ing as well. #lka pic.twitter.com/Pwsco7BfT5

— Meera Srinivasan (@Meerasrini) November 15, 2018

BACKGROUND

Back in 2015, PTI had reported that Wickremesinghe had vowed to implement India-backed 13th Amendment, that calls for the devolution of police and land powers to Provincial Councils.

NDTV had also tweeted that Wickremesinghe had told them “in principle, we have agreed to full autonomy to Tamil areas”, as per a report in The Tamil Guardian.

However, local media reported that the Sri Lankan PM had denied agreeing to giving “full autonomy” to the Tamil regions of the island.

Sri Lanka's The Nation newspaper had contacted Wickremesinghe to verify whether he had made such a statement, the report added.

‘No, no, no... What I said was that I am for the implementation of the 13th Amendment and that I am for the unitary state,” Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had told the paper.

Following this, The Nation had accused NDTV of deliberately distorting the prime minister's statement on this "highly sensitive matter to all Sri Lankans".

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