ISLAMABAD: A European group has exposed the involvement of an Indian network behind holding of multiple anti-Pakistan demonstrations in Geneva and also the controversial tour of 27 Members of European Parliament (MEPs) to Indian occupied Kashmir in October.
The Brussel-based non-governmental EU Disinfo Lab, which in its initial findings earlier November uncovered a network of 265 ‘fake news outlets’ amplifying propaganda against Pakistan, released its full report on Monday about fake NGOs and organizations responsible for anti-Pakistan lobbying events in Europe.
Based on data of shared web servers and phone numbers, EU Disinfo Lab found Indian fake news outlet Srivastava Group to be at the heart of the network.
Srivastava Group is an Indian holding company which declares on its website that it has “interests in natural resources, clean energy, airspace, consulting services, healthcare, print media and publishing”, however investigations found network influencing European Union and United Nations with content critical of Pakistan.
The report highlighted coordinated social media campaigns and protests against Pakistan every year during UN Human Rights Council sessions and also using hashtag for Human Right Council’s live broadcast on each occasion.
The European Organization for Pakistani Minorities, an NGO, had displayed its posters on taxi bikes in Geneva and had also organized the #PakistanStopGenocide campaign on September 10, 2019 in front of UN in Geneva.
The investigation found that these demonstrations were covered by Srivastava Group as all websites copy-pasted the same content from the very same sources, with those being EP Today, Times of Geneva, 4newsAgency, and New Delhi Times.
The European Organization for Pakistani Minorities (EOPM) and Voice of Pakistani Minorities (VOPM) were found involved in all the campaigns organized in Geneva against Pakistan on the subject of treatment of minorities and issue of genocide.
The issues raised in the campaigns were meant to steer criticism towards Pakistan for the state of minorities and persecuted groups in the country.
The report mentioned an individual named Madi Sharma, a British member of the European Economic and Social Committee since 2002, who wrote for EP Today and the New Delhi Times as their “EU correspondent” and also sent MEPs invitations for the controversial trip.
The European parliamentarians including from the United Kingdom and France visited the Indian occupied Kashmir after prime minister Narendra Modi revoked special status of the Valley. The trip was critised as a “Public Relation stunt of the Indian government”.
“We found that the IP address of the Srivastava Group is also home to the obscure online media “New Delhi Times” and the International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies (IINS), which are all based at the same address in New Delhi, India,” EU Disinfo Lab said on its website.
“A few weeks later, 27 Members of the European Parliament were invited by IINS to visit Kashmir and to meet with Prime Minister Modi. This was covered by the press, and journalists began to link our discovery to the funders and organizers of this “controversial visit” – IINS and the direct entourage of EP Today,” it added.
The Brussel-based watchdog said digging further into servers, IP Addresses, and Twitter accounts led it to 4newsagency.com, which presents itself as a “synergy between 4 news agencies from Switzerland, Belgium, Thailand, and Abu Dhabi (UAE)”, with “teams located in 100 countries”.
