Old Video From Assam Peddled As Bangladeshis Demanding Separate State
BOOM found that the video shows a protest against the alleged harassment of D (doubtful) voters which happened in Assam's Goalpara district in 2017.
An old video showing policemen clashing with a group of protesters has surfaced on social media with false claims that it shows crackdown on Bangladeshi Muslims in Assam who took out a march demanding a separate country.
BOOM found that the video is from a four-year-old protest which happened in Assam against the alleged harassment of D (doubtful) voters over the issue of National Register of Citizens (NRC). According to the government of Assam's website, 'Doubtful Voters' are those who are identified during electoral roll revision as D Voters. Their cases are pending with the Foreigners Tribunals or have been declared as foreigners by the Tribunal.
The video has been captioned in Hindi as, "Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma made sure that Bangladeshis are thrashed properly. Why? Watch the complete video to know about it."
(Original Caption in Hindi: असम के मुख्यमंत्री हेमंत विश्व शर्मा जी ने बांग्लादेशियों की तबीयत से ठुकाई करवाई। क्यों??? ये जानने के लिए पूरा वीडियो देखें।)
The video has been edited to include text in Hindi which reads , "Bangladeshi Muslims have demanded a separate country in Assam".
Several Facebook and Twitter users posted the video with the same caption. Click here and here to see the archive of these posts.
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Fact Check
BOOM broke the video into key frames and performed a reverse image search. It led us to a longer version of the video which was uploaded on YouTube on July 4, 2017.
The caption with the video reads, "ASSAM POLICE FIRING YAKUB ALI GOALPARA 30/06/2017(2)".
We ran a keyword search using this description and found an article published by The Wire on July 1, 2017 about the incident.
The report stated, "A 22-year-old man, Yakub Ali, died in police firing in Assam's Goalpara district on June 30, 2017 during a public rally to protest against the alleged inclusion of several Indian citizens in the D (doubtful)-voters list in the state by police and foreigners' tribunals."
It also included the video of the protest uploaded by Hussain Ahmed Madani, an eyewitness of the police firing. Madani captioned the video on Facebook as, "Heated interaction in Kharbuja of Gopalpara district One person was killed and another was injured in a gunfight between the protesters and the police.."
The same incident was covered by Assamese news organisation Prag News at that time.
Yakub Ali was among hundreds of Muslim protesters, who demonstrated on the national highway after the district administration refused them permission to stage a blockade on the highway on this westernmost part of the state on the south bank of Brahmaputra river, reported The Times of India.
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