Pashtuns, the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan, after the majority, Punjabis have their own language, and also live in neighboring Afghanistan (archived link).
They have suffered from successive military campaigns to eradicate Pakistani Taliban militants operating in the border regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where they are the largest group. ethnic majority group (archived link). Pashtun rights activists have done just that called for an end to military operations and accused security forces of arbitrary killings and detentions of Pashtuns in their sweeping repression.archived link).
The army is also fighting separatist groups in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran and is home to the majority of Pakistan’s minority group. The life of a Baloch ethnic group (archived link).
There have been ongoing protests accusing security forces of abuses against civilians in their efforts to root out militants. Separatist militants took passengers off buses, blew up a bridge and stormed a hotel on August 26. coordinated attacks in Balochistan, killing dozens of people (archived link).
The video made the rounds in similar X-posts here And here.
But the footage actually shows prisoner dummies at a war memorial in Vietnam.
The Vietnamese prison
“The video was filmed in the French Tiger Cages, located at the Con Dao Special National Relic Site,” an official from Con Dao’s board of directors told AFP in Hanoi on September 26.
The Con Dao Prison was established by the French colonial authorities in 1861 to imprison opponents of their rule, developing a reputation for using torture against those imprisoned there. In 1954, the prison was taken over by the US-backed South Vietnamese government, which continued to detain political opponents. The prison was closed in 1975 (archived link).
AFP photos of another cell on Con Dao Island, here And hereshowing that the supposed prisoners were not real people, but dummies representing the former prisoners.
Below is a screenshot of an AFP photo:
The caption on the photo read: ‘Phung Thi Huong guides visitors into a cell in Poulo Condor, a former prison, where 80 puppets recreate the detention conditions of political prisoners housed there until 1975. More than 200,000 people were imprisoned on Con Dao Island under terrible conditions, of whom 20,000 died from torture, malaria, typhoid, starvation or exhaustion.”
Keyword search led to a Facebook after dated August 19, which contained photos showing similar scenes to those in the fake post (archived link).
“Con Dao is the place where French colonialists and American imperialists arrested and tortured patriot fighters. If we came here, we would be aware of the pain that revolutionary prisoners had to experience,” the post’s Vietnamese-language caption read in part.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the fake post (left) and the Facebook post with photos of similar scenes in Con Dao (right):
A YouTube video published on July 31 also shows prison cells at a Con Dao monument similar to the cells shown in the fake post (archived link).
Local media Vietnamnet Global also published several photos of the dolls in cells known as “tiger cages” in a article on January 25, 2023 (archived link).
