A video of a protest rally with Muslim men dressed in white skull caps, holding ‘Stop Killing Rohingya Muslims’ placards, was shared by Tarek Fatah, a Canadian journalist and a serial fake news offender, as a call for 'Islam Zindabad' in Kolkata, West Bengal.
The video, however, is from 2017 when an Islamic organisation in Bangladesh led a rally to the Myanmar embassy to protest the atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.
CLAIM
The video was shared by Fatah with the claim, “This is not Karachi, Kashmir or Kerala. No, this chant of “Islam Zindabad” is being raised in Kolkata, capital city of #MamataBanerjee-ruled #WestBengal!”
The video had garnered over 1,46,000 views and 6,000 retweets at the time of writing this article.
The post was shared by several social media users.
WHAT WE FOUND
The video is from September 2017, when an Islamic organisation in Bangladesh marched towards the Myanmar embassy.
A reverse image search of the key frames of the video led us to YouTube channel, ‘Spicy Infotube’ that had uploaded the video on 13 September 2017 with the caption, “Islami Andolon Bangladesh enclose myanmar Embassy (sic).”
A keyword search led us to a news report by an online news outlet, Banglanews24, “Rally of Islamic movement in protest of Rohingya persecution,” also dated 13 September 2017.
It stated that an Islamist political organisation, Islami Andolan Bangladesh (IAB), led a rally to the Myanmar embassy to protest the torture and killing of Rohingya Muslims.
The rally was stopped at the Shanti Nagar Junction in Dhaka.
We also found a video of the march on the YouTube channel of Islami Shasontantra Chhatra Andolan (ISCA), the student outfit of IAB.
IAB had also announced the rally on their Facebook page, asking people to "Surround Myanmar Embassy in Dhaka on 13 September."
Further, visual clues from the video prove that the it is from Bangladesh and not India.
The flag of Bangladesh with the green background a red dot in the middle can be seen in a still-shot of the video.
The police officers can also be seen wearing the uniform that is similar to the police uniform in Bangladesh.
Evidently, the protest from Bangladesh has been falsely shared as a rally in Kolkata, West Bengal.
(With inputs from SM HoaxSlayer)
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