Fact-Check: Unrelated Video From Myanmar Falsely Linked to Manipur Violence

A post by news portal Northeast Now, which shows an image of several men holding guns, was shared with the claim that an armed group "threatened" to take over Kangla, a significant area of Manipur's Imphal city.

What did the users say?: Those sharing the post claimed that a message delivered in Manipuri (Meitei language), threatens to capture Kangla, a significant area in Imphal city, within two months.

Who shared it?: News portal Northeast Now shared a story about this on their X (formerly Twitter) account.

This post recorded 22.3K views at the time of writing this story. We also received a query about this on our WhatsApp tipline.

(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here here.)

Is this true?: This video is not from Manipur and has been edited to add the audio onto the video.

• The video is actually from Myanmar and shows Maui, Deputy commander-in-chief of Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) talking in Burmese about their fight against the State Administration Council (SAC) troops.

How did we find out?: We ran a Google reverse image search on the post and found two videos with the same frame.

• On Facebook, a news page named CBN Daily News uploaded the video on 22 December 2022.

• This predates the ethnic violence in Manipur, which started in May 2023.

• Similarly, we came across the same video on X by user "@nicholas6284," who uploaded it on 22 December 2023.

"Surrender and cooperate
or
Be destroyed.
You have 2 options.
If you choose the latter, be prepared.
A new wave is coming."
Maui - KNDF Deputy CinC to Sit-tat members.
I got chills watching this. #MyanmarRevolution pic.twitter.com/5LrLGRhTQ7

— Nicholas (@nicholas6284) December 22, 2023

• The Google reverse image search also led us to a video report called, "Myanmar's young people take up arms against junta" by France24 from 16 February. It also used the the same video of the KNDF in their report.

• It says, that Maui, 30-years-old of the Karenni Rebels had become a prime target for the army generals.

• At 3:55 minutes, one can see Karenni's video being played in the report.

Conclusion: Clearly, this video is not related to the violence Manipur. The video shows Myanmar's Karenni forces who are fighting against the military rule in their country.

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