5th February, Kashmir Solidarity Day or a Propaganda to Unleash Rebels?

Featured Hashtag Scanner
DFRAC Editor

Kashmir Solidarity Day came into existence when Qazi Hussain Ahmad (Former leader of Jamaat-e-Islami) and Nawaz Sharif (former Prime Minister) held rallies in POK as a symbol to showcase solidarity with Kashmiris in 1990 after the Gawaka Dal incident. Whereas after 1990, every first attack on the valley of Kashmir is done by Pakistan till revoke of Article 370, either be Kargil War or other several proxy wars. Pakistan runs propaganda to revive the issues of Kashmir on the internet as well as ground through spreading fake news and hatred. Pakistan claims to give shelter to Kashmiris from the iniquity done by the Indian army on their Social Media post. On the other hand, This report reveals the true intention behind the manipulated tweets on Kashmir Solidarity Days.

#KashmirSolidarityDay

The Hashtag has crossed 133.2K tweets on Twitter. After Analyzing we found most users from Pakistan were in favour of the day. Prominent personalities like PM Imran Khan, famous cricketers, actors, actresses and politicians expressed their views on Twitter. One thing which was common about their tweets was that they follow the same language of empathizing with Kashmiris by provoking the people of Kashmir. Many users have also raised the Pakistan fabricated flag of Azad Jammu & Kashmir. The roar of Tweets on 5th February was also made to defame India’s image globally.

Hashtag Timeline

Twitter has witnessed the flash, hate, and conflicts evolve around the Kashmir Solidarity day on 5th February 2022. Major tweets made on the day carried the #KashmirSolidarityDay and it all started on the 3rd of Feb and had a peak on the 5th of Feb with more than 24,000 tweets embedding the hashtags.

Hashtag Timeline

 

  • Users Location

According to the data collected, we found out that more than 4,300 users who tweeted and interacted on the hashtag were from Pakistan followed by India with more than 600 users. USA and UK also took part in this hashtag with more than 86 and 70 users respectively tweeting on the subject.

  • Hate evolves under #KashmirSolidarityDay

As mentioned above 4300 users were from Pakistan used the hashtag, furthermore, the major hate was also seen coming from Pakistani users on the day. The tweets given below is a clear representation of how Pakistani users have tried to raise all the negative and misleading points of Kashmir and share an intention to defame India’s image globally. The tweets also dare to provoke the people of Kashmir to become a rebel. Moinuddin Ibn Nasrullah (PeaceMoin) is an Islamic extremist and a hatemonger who has defended Zakir Nayak, the accused of terrorist attack in Dhaka and once again he is trying to spread the hatred.

  1. Tweet of PeaceMoin

  • A user named Urdu Lite posted a picture of an Indian Map that divides Indian territories on different grounds. The present Jammu & Kashmir has been categorized under Free Kashmir united by current Kashmir and northern region with Khalistan etc. The map is arousing as well as represents their hidden intention behind all of it.

 

  • Shuja ul Haq Baig, a Pakistani activist tweeted that the only solution for Kashmir Dispute is Jihad. He also raised an argument that only celebrating Kashmir Solidarity Day is not sufficient. Pakistan government should make a move regarding the dispute in the land.

 

Accounts Interacted mostly

The below-given graph shows the Twitter accounts that interacted the most with the hashtag. @senn_soursv tweeted mostly with more than 450 tweets on the hashtag, followed by @amrik73384763, @gurmukh94799744 with 336 and 286 tweets respectively. Also, many bot accounts were created to spread the Hashtag. @gurmukh94799744   is one of them, after analyzing his Twitter account, we found that his account has a pattern of four to five tweets. In short, only four tweets can be seen repetitively on his Twitter account embedding the Hashtag.

Accounts Creation Timeline

After digging inside the narrow space we found more than 9,700 Twitter accounts were created after the year 2010. We also got to know that almost 50 -38 accounts were made on the 4th and 5th of Feb respectively. These accounts were made to amplify the hashtags and trends. As mentioned above about the bots, in the same way, propaganda was run through the hashtag to revive the issue involving Kashmir and portray the wicked image of India on International grounds.

Graph for User Creation Timeline
Graph for User Creation Timeline

Fake News

In the period much fake news was spread by Pakistani Users on Kashmir

Fake Claim 1: Naveed Nomi, a Pakistani user posted a picture where some people are sitting on the side of the road in injured and sick condition. He claimed that this is a sight of Kashmir.

Fact Check 1

After our image search on Google, we got to know that the image is taken from the video of the incident that took place in Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Due to gas leakage, thousands of people got sick as per the report in Nav Bharat Times. Therefore the video and pictures are misleading.

Fake claim 2

A picture was going viral on Social Media, where police officer lathi-charged students of a college. Some Pakistani users were claiming that the brutality took place in Kashmir.

Fake claim

Fact check 2

After checking to cross-check the truth behind the image, we got to know that the image is of New Delhi during the protest that took place after the Nirbhaya Gang Rape in 2002.

Conclusion several fake news has been flourished all around the social media by Pakistani users to revive the decade’s old issue of Kashmir.

Accounts Mentioned

Many accounts were mentioned in the tweets with this trending hashtag. Some of the accounts that were mentioned more times were @team4pk with more than 300 tags followed by @officialteammaj with almost 300 tags, @teampakalpha__ with 230 tags, @difaeypakistan and @upm_power with more than 200 tags respectively. All top 5 accounts mentioned in the tweets are Pakistani accounts. @team4pk is the account that was tagged by most of the users tweeting on Kashmir Solidarity Day. The account only has 1k+ followers but many users have tagged Team for Pakistan in their post about oppression in Kashmir which concludes that the users and the account follow a similar ideology.  After checking the official account of Team For Pakistan, we witnessed that major tweets are done on the issues of India. They might try to run propaganda to defame India.

Graph for Account Mentioned

Verified Accounts Involved

Along with other users who interacted with the hashtag, many verified accounts also tweeted on the topic. Some of them include @ImranKhanPTI, @HamidMirPAK, @PTIofficial, @SMQureshiPTI, @ARYNEWSOFFICIAL, @MuradSaeedPTI, @PakPMO, @FaisalJavedKhan, @iamAhmadshahzad, @GovtofPakistan, etc.

Graph for Verified Accounts

 

Tweets done by verified Accounts

Not only verified accounts but Globally Renowned Companies also showed their support with Pakistan’s Kashmir Solidarity Day

A huge scandal also came into existence on 5th February 2022 where the Pakistan franchise of Hyundai, KFC, Pizza hut and some Japanese company uphold their support in Kashmir Solidarity Day by tweeting on social media. The tweets created an international controversy. As Legally Jammu & Kashmir is a part of India and these companies also sell their products in India as well Pakistan.

Hyundai

  • Hyundai Pakistan shared this poster on its official Twitter account and showed its support with residents of Kashmiris. This tweet created a big Controversy in India as people decided to Boycott the Hyundai seeing the poster.
Tweet by Hyundai Pakistan
  • People’s reactions after seeing the tweet of Hyundai Pakistan’swas was outrageous. Buyers also came on the verge to cancel cars from Hyundai and KIA. Some users even promoted brands like TATA and Mahindra.
#boycottHyundai Tweets

 

South Korean Company Hyundai Motors suffered a loss of 12.5% fall in shares of the company as per Times of India. #BoycottHyundai crossed 176.4k Tweet on Twitter in India. The elevation in the virtual protest over social media platforms cost the company’s image among the buyers.

After seeing a reduction in the company’s sales, Hyundai Motors India Ltd shared a note, addressing commitment towards the nation. They also mentioned that India is their second home and they firmly respect the strong ethos of Nationalism.

 

KFC

Another Company that has hit the radar of Indian buyers is KFC, an American Company whose Pakistan franchise has also posted on Solidarity Day. Their tweet while addressing Kashmir, “You never left our thoughts and we hope that the coming years bring peace to you!” The tweet uproar the aggression of Indians as all of these Pakistani Franchise were desiring over the land which is a part of India, legally.

Tweet of KFC Pakistan

#BoycottKFC crossed 68.8K tweets on Twitter. People came on the verge of also boycotting KFC. The share market of KFC didn’t face any such losses as much Hyundai Motors and KIA did.

KFC India also shared an apology note where they mentioned their sincere behaviour towards the nation. In many stores of KFC, a poster was hung on the counter saying, “Entire Kashmir including POK is an integral part of India”. The generosity shown behind the poster made a massive impact on the audience. Thus KFC didn’t suffer loss in terms of the share market.

Apology by KFC India

 

Few Pakistani companies deleted their post on Solidarity day whereas Hyundai Motors has said, “It does not comment on political or religious issues in any specific region. Therefore, it is clearly against Hyundai Motor’s policy that the independently-owned distributor in Pakistan made unauthorized Kashmir-related social media posts from their accounts” on the social media post regarding Solidarity day.

Common user spreading hashtags against India

India has witnessed another big protest on Hijab Row which is quite widespread on the Internet and in a few states starting from the origin Karnataka. According to our data analysis, 363 users have used both #HijabRow and #KashmirSolidarityDay. The yellow part of the circle represents the number of 633 users who have used #Muskan and #KashmirSolidarityDay. The highlighted part in the middle describes that 125 users have commonly tweeted on all three Hashtags. Through this graph, we can conclude that users are constantly trying to point out India’s biasness towards a particular religion.

Common users who have used the hashtags

 

Location of the users embedding the Hashtags

After digging further, as we have mentioned above 125 are the common users who have used all the three hashtags, (#KashmirSolidarityDay, #Muskan, #HijabRow). Most importantly 95.7% of users are from Pakistan, 2.13% from India and 1.06% from both US and UK. The graph tends to state the agenda on which Pakistan is working on Twitter.

Location of the users

 

WordCloud

The Wordcloud shows the words that were used the maximum number of times in the tweets. Some words include, “Kashmir Solidarity”, “terrorism Kashmir”, “Proud Kashmiri”, “and India Kashmir”, “self-determination”, “invaders killed”. A very different outlook was witnessed on Solidarity Day 2022. Kashmiris took a stand for India and contentedly posted in favour of India. New Hashtags went viral, #Nayakashmir, #KashmirSolidaritywithIndia, #IAmKashmir, #KashmirRejectsPakistan.

WordCloud

 

  • Indian Kashmiris take on Kashmir Solidarity Day

On the one side, we saw tweets of Pakistanis shredding their share of sympathy and support to Kashmiris on 5TH February whereas Kashmiris were found optimistic about Kashmir being a part of India. Many users tweeted that Kashmir is just a piece of land for Pakistan, The Pakistani government has nothing to do with the emotions of Kashmiris. On the other hand, some users were quite exhausted with the dispute of their Land as at the end of the day, it’s the people of Kashmir who will face the circumstances.

#KashmirSolidaritywithIndia has reached almost 133k tweets on Twitter. 

 

  • A user shared a delightful video of Covid-19 and expressed her gratitude towards the Indian army.

 

  • Youth of North Kashmir marched around the valley in support of India on the 5th of February in response to Pakistan’s #KashmirSolidarityDay

 

  • Some users shared wicked intentions of Pakistan and others proudly held the flag of India and posted pictures.

 

Conclusion- Through our report, we have analyzed that in the name of Kashmir Solidarity day, Pakistan has not just tried to interfere with India’s internal matter in terms of Kashmir but many Pakistani users have widespread hashtags which involve severe hate, fake and misleading news against India on the Internet. Our analysis also highlights that any major Indian issues gets major traffic from Pakistan and they give it a regional angle. Nevertheless, Kashmiris were not found getting convinced with the efforts of Pakistanis. As #KashmirSolidaritywithIndia suppressed Pakistan’s #KashmirSolidarityDay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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