Pakistan is ‘funding’ pro-Khalistan hysteria online, despite banning on-ground events
The Print
May 29, 2019
Pakistan is ‘funding’ pro-Khalistan hysteria online, despite
banning on-ground events
Pro-Khalistan campaigns have seen a resurgence on social
media since the Kartarpur Corridor announcement, and experts say Pakistan’s ISI
is fuelling them.
Pakistan may have banned pro-Khalistan activity on its soil,
but that has not stopped its intelligence agency ISI from continuing to fund
and support online activities in favour of a separate Sikh state.
A senior Punjab Police officer who monitors militant activity
told ThePrint that the ISI has been funding pro-Khalistan activities like
Referendum 2020, which its website calls “a campaign to liberate Punjab,
currently occupied by India”.
Social media analytics confirm that pro-Khalistan campaigns
on social media have seen a resurgence after India and Pakistan started
on-ground work on the Kartarpur corridor in November 2018.
“There has been a greater focus on spreading Khalistani
propaganda online, since it’s the cheapest, most cost-effective way to spread
propaganda, and Pakistan has been funding and supporting these efforts,” said Sushant
Sareen, senior fellow at Observer Research Foundation.
The Punjab Police officer quoted above added: “Social media
has definitely become a nuisance. It will be used to run misinformation
campaigns, to run movements like Referendum 2020, to idolise (banned)
organisations like the KLF (Khalistan Liberation Force), to gather monetary
funding, and to spread propaganda by selling T-shirts.”
The officer said movements like Referendum 2020 are funded by
ISI through pro-Khalistani lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal advisor of
Sikhs for Justice, the organisation which heads the movement.
Pakistani support on the ground too
According to an April 2019 report, Pakistan had banned
Referendum 2020-linked activity on its soil at the request of India.
However, several pro-Khalistan social media accounts and
websites, including those linked to Referendum 2020, can be traced back to
Pakistan, said the police officer. “Pakistan is unofficially supporting
Referendum 2020 even on the ground,” he said.
The officer added that there are physical posters of
Referendum 2020 in Pakistan, some of them “large enough to cover a gurudwara”.
Sareen added that in the last four or five years, the
Khalistan movement had gained considerable traction on the ground with the help
of Pakistan’s ISI.
“Pakistan’s Khalistani proxies have been able to revive the
movement in a robust way through protests and petitions like Referendum 2020 —
there are Pakistani fingerprints all over this,” he said. “For instance
Khalistan support groups in Canada are openly supported by Pakistani diplomats
who are undercover ISI agents.”
After the Kartarpur announcement
The social media movement for Khalistan increased especially
since work on the Kartarpur Corridor was announced by India and Pakistan in
November 2018.
According to a report by Innefu, a social media monitoring
lab which has worked with the Punjab Police, “Khalistan propaganda was almost
inactive before the announcement for the Kartarpur Corridor”.
To substantiate its report, the Delhi-based lab tracked
Khalistani propaganda online between April 2018 and April 2019. It compared the
amount of pro-Khalistan content in November 2018 with number of pro-Khalistan
content a month before, and found the number of Twitter posts increased to 1,181
from 161, the number of YouTube propaganda videos to 1,374 from 208, and the
number of Facebook posts to 1,439 from 556.
The Punjab police officer spoke of two pro-Khalistan Twitter
accounts in particular that have been identified by Innefu as spreading
propaganda — @GurmeetKaur2020 and @1984Tribute.
@GurmeetKaur2020 publishes content like this video of an old
woman using a slipper to slap the face of Narendra Modi pasted on an effigy:
Embedded video
Gurmeet Kaur
@GurmeetKaur2020
This treatment will be
witnessed soon in streets of India #Referendum2020
#ChowkidaarNahiJawabdarChahiye #1984SikhGenocide #Khalistan2020
#KhalistanZindabad @sikhsiyasat @kaurageousx @smartrandhawa
The handle also tweets photos of currency from a future
Khalistan: “The National Bank Of Khalistan Issue 100 & 50 currency notes.
Usable After 2020. Our Future #khalistan2020 “
Gurmeet Kaur
@GurmeetKaur2020
The National Bank Of
Khalistan Issue 100 & 50 currency notes. Usable After 2020. Our Future
#khalistan2020 #KhalistanZindabad #Referendum2020
@1984Tribute posts content both idolising the KLF and
commercialising Khalistan. These posts show tweets advertising Khalistan
T-shirts and music with a show of guns as well.
@1984Tribute
Straight Outta
Khalistan Vol5
Dedicated to Shaheed Jathedar Harminder Singh Nihang of
Khalistan Liberation Force
Shift to WhatsApp
The police officer added that most of the propaganda content
is now shifting to WhatsApp, instead of public platforms like Facebook or
Twitter.
An example is the video (see above) of a woman saying
Khalistan will be freed, which recently circulated on WhatsApp. It shows the
woman trampling, tearing, then setting fire to an Indian flag against the
backdrop of a Pakistani flag.
“Khalistan will be freed, and Kashmir will also be freed,”
she says in Hindustani.
The police officer added that battling this online Khalistan
activity is doubly difficult because of the use of bots and fake accounts.
“Tracing identities of those running accounts is difficult,
because often, bots are used. Also, some accounts have Indian-sounding names,
but when you track the IP address, they turn out to be based in Pakistan or the
UK,” he said.
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