An edited video created by splicing two clips - the first showing a rebel militant group operating a drone in Myanmar and the second video of drone visuals from Manipur is being shared with a false claim that it shows Kukis using drones to attack local police.
Ethnic clashes between the Meitei community and the Kuki tribe have rocked Manipur since May 3, 2023 with news reports estimating close to 100 lives have been lost in the violence.
Against this backdrop, several unrelated videos are being peddled as visuals from the conflict.
The viral video is being shared warning the Metei community and claiming that it shows Kukis using drones to attack police in the state. The video is being shared with the caption, "kuki terrorists use drones to find out the position of police and get ready to attack. please be careful all the metei."
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The edited video is being shared on Facebook with the false claim.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video has combined two different clips to make the false claim that it shows Kukis using a drone to target state police. Visuals of men using a drone have been taken from a news report about a rebel group in Myanmar and the second video of drone footage is from Manipur which was shot by a local news outlet.
The comments on Facebook and Twitter pointed out that the visuals of the men using the drone are from an ABC news report from August 2022 on Chin State rebels in Myanmar using drones to fight in the civil war against the military government.
Taking a hint from this, we found the visuals have been taken from ABC News report video which is 31 minutes long and was uploaded on YouTube on August 18, 2022, with the title "On the Frontline of Myanmar's Forgotten Civil War"
At the 15-minute timestamp, we can see the same sequence of events as in the viral video of the same men operating the drone. ABC reporter Matt Davis identifies the rebel group as Chinland Defense Force (CDF) which has been using commercially available drones to monitor the moments of the Tatmadaw (Myanmar army).
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The visuals of drone footage viewed from above in the viral video have been taken from another video that was published by the local news outlet Lamka Talk which is based in Lamka, Churachandpur in Manipur.
Taking a hint from the replies we found the original video which was published by Lamka Talk on May 29, 2023, with the title, "Drone footage shows involvement of state police commandos in attacking Tribal villages in Manipur"
The first six minutes in the below video match the drone visuals seen in the viral video. The original video below is 24 minutes long.
We then contacted C Lian Langel, who runs Lamka Talk, who confirmed that the drone footage was filmed using his drone near Sugnu area in Manipur.
Langel alleged that the drone visual he captured shows the involvement of state police in attacking tribals. "We tried to show the involvement of state forces in attacking tribal villages, but as we don't have a high-quality drone, the zoom part is not working so we couldn't show it in detail but we were able to capture footage showing security forces entering the village. Now my drone footage is falsely being shared along with a video from Myanmar which actually has Chin rebels in it," Langel told BOOM.
