Indian Chronicles: A recipe for how to set up a fake local media with fake journalists

Author: EU DisInfo Lab

Organization/Publisher: EU DisInfo Lab

Date/Place: December 11, 2020/Brussels

Type of Literature: Report

Number of Pages: 89

Link: https://www.disinfo.eu/publications/indian-chronicles%3A-a-recipe-to-set-up-fake-media-and-fake-journalists 

Keywords: Pakistan, Europe, UN, UNHRC, Disinformation, campaign, India, NGOs, Media, Fake News, ANI

Brief:

Brussels-based EU DisInfo Lab has busted the largest network of NGOs and fake media organizations, linked to India, which ran a 15-year campaign to discredit Pakistan and ran an anti-Kashmir narrative. In an exhaustive digital investigation, the EU-focused investigation team uncovered the campaign mostly run by New Delhi-based Srivastava Group. The campaign included resurrecting long-dead important people in the world of human rights, running hundreds of fake media outlets, reviving organizations and using stolen identities to paint Pakistan in a negative light in the EU and elsewhere. These groups used at least 10 UN-recognized NGOs to run its propaganda at Geneva, New York and at the EU parliament. “Indian Chronicles’ key objective is to undermine Pakistan internationally. To do so, they resurrected dead NGOs at the UN. They impersonated the EU. They laundered content produced by fake media to real media – and reached millions in South-Asia & across the world,” the lab said. Interestingly, these fake news organizations shared the same server as the so-called NGOs viz the European Organization for Pakistani Minorities and Pakistani Women’s Human Rights Organization – all working against Pakistan. This bombshell revelation comes just days after Pakistan released what it called “irrefutable” evidence of India sponsoring terrorism in the country. Pakistan used the revelations as ammunition against its archrival, calling on the international community to “take notice of a rogue Indian regime that now threatens the stability of the global system.” It also asked the UN and EU to delist all these organizations that have been found linked to the disinformation campaign. The probe also raises questions about the link between the disinformation campaign and Indian agencies when it found how fake news travelled all over the world through the fake local media outlets, including India’s premier video news agency the ANI, which has “ambiguous relations” with the country’s establishment.

By: Riyaz ul Khaliq, Non-Resident CIGA Research Associate