Claim: Siasat.pk quoted lawyer Imaan Mazari as saying that Punjabis killed by the proscribed militant group the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) are not martyrs.
Fact: Siasat.pk did not report any such statement by Imaan Mazari. The image in the claim is doctored and the statement has been falsely attributed to the lawyer.
On 12 July, an X user “@Tahirmughalpml8” posted a picture (archive) attributed to “Siasat.pk” that allegedly quoted the human rights activist and lawyer Imaan Mazari as saying that Punjabis killed by the BLA are not martyrs.
This claim circulated after the brutal killing of nine Punjabi travellers last week. Armed assailants attacked two buses in the Zhob and Loralai districts of Balochistan, the southwestern province of Pakistan.
The buses were travelling to Punjab when they were stopped. Unidentified gunmen checked the IDs of passengers before removing them from the bus. The travellers, whose bodies were recovered from the mountains, were targeted based on their Punjabi ethnicity, according to Al Jazeera‘s report, which quoted government officials.
The BLA, which has carried out such attacks in the past, has not claimed responsibility for this incident. Another banned militant group, Balochistan Liberation Front, claimed to have carried out the brutal killings, Dawn reported.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check initially scoured the website of “Siasat.pk”, a discussion forum and local news platform, but found no evidence that they had posted a statement by Imaan Mazari about the recent killings. As the claim circulated on X (formerly Twitter), we couldn’t find any such posts on Siasat.pk’s X account. The keyword search using advanced X operators did not yield any results either, making the claim seem suspicious.
Analysing the image itself showed that it was doctored and the claim was false. The discussion forum typically includes a QR code in its pictures, linking to the source of the information. For instance, their 16 July post (archive) about former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s statement regarding his incarceration features a QR code at the bottom left of the image. When scanned, the code reveals a link directing to a post (archive) by Khan’s verified X handle.
Real posts by Siasat.pk contains a QR code that provides a link to the source.
The same can be observed for other images shared by Siasat.pk here (archive), here (archive), and here (archive).
However, when the QR code in the image being fact-checked was scanned, it displayed an incomplete link, starting with “https”. Upon clicking on the broken link, the browser showed the error message: “Safari can’t open the page because the server can’t be found.” This confirmed that the image contained a fake QR code with no source to substantiate its claim.
Doctored post with a fake QR code and thus a broken link.
Soon after the claim circulated on X, the blog forum issued a swift denial of the claim, stating: “Fake Alert. Please beware of accounts creating and circulating fabricated political statements using our official logo to make them appear authentic. We want to make it clear: This image is fake and was not created by our team.”
Mazari, who was the target of this disinformation, also denied making such a statement on X.
“I am categorically denying the statement that was attributed to me. I am also categorically denying the existence of the post itself. It’s a doctored and concocted image that’s not just been falsely attributed to me but also to siasat.pk,” she told Soch Fact Check.
Therefore, the image of the alleged post, quoting Mazari, is fake.
Why is Mazari the target of disinformation?
Imaan Mazari is widely known for her human rights activism and advocacy for the rights of marginalised ethnic groups in Pakistan. The lawyer has advocated for the victims of enforced disappearances from Pakistan’s southwestern province Balochistan, as well as for the rights of Pashtun missing persons.
Mazari’s activism, similar to that of other human rights advocates like Sammi Deen Baloch and Mahrang Baloch, has drawn the ire of the authorities. In August 2023, police and men in plain clothes broke into her house and arrested her, a day after she participated in the rally of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), organised to demand an end to enforced disappearances and terrorism. Ali Wazir, the co-founder of the PTM, was also arrested.
They were purportedly arrested on charges of sedition and terrorism, a move questioned and condemned by prominent human rights groups. “In arresting Imaan Mazari and others, Pakistani authorities are using vague, overbroad anti-terrorism laws to stifle dissent. The government should uphold the right to due process,” said the Human Rights Watch. At the time, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) also condemned the illegal detention.
If this weren’t enough, online disinformation has also become a tactic to discredit human rights defenders (HRDs), journalists, and minority groups. According to Amnesty International, smear campaigns targeting HRDs who criticise the state’s actions are a common tactic used to discredit their work. This can endanger the safety of the human rights activists who champion the rights of vulnerable groups.
“It affects me to the extent that obviously I’m getting death threats, I am being called a terrorist proxy, and a terrorist supporter,” Mazari told Soch Fact Check.
False claims linking human rights defenders to militant groups have been debunked by Soch Fact Check in the past. Similarly, the statement falsely attributed to Mazari, which started circulating online after the killing of innocent civilians in Balochistan last week, appears to be part of a broader pattern of targeting activists.
“Much worse happens to Baloch leaders who are falsely accused in the way that I have been falsely accused of making this statement. So definitely, it’s supposed to create a sort of resentful attitude in the public against you, to destroy your message and narrative,” Mazari said and added that, “but like with everything else, I am not going to let it affect me.”
Virality
The X post garnered 478,500 views and was liked 1,300 times.
Najam Wali Khan, a broadcast journalist with Neo News TV, also shared this false post here (archive), which received 571,900 views and 1,400 likes.
It was also shared on X here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, it appeared here, here, and here.
Conclusion: Imaan Mazari did not say that Punjabis killed by the BLA are not martyrs. A post which falsely attributed the statement to her has been doctored.
Background image in cover photo: BBC
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