Islamabad, (Asian independent) Amid an internal rift in the country, the Pakistan government came up with a report on Thursday accusing the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a civil society group comprising mainly of ethnic Pashtuns living in the tribal areas of Pakistan, of colluding with India, Israel and Afghanistan to carry out anti-state trends.
The Digital Media Wing under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting prepared an Anti-State Trends Deep Analytics Report (2019 to 2021) highlighting how hastags were amplified to create pressure on the government.
The report stated that they have analyzed all the hashtags and the players behind those hashtags.
The ones the report mentions are PTM and Baloch separatists, Mainstream Political Parties (PMLN, ANP, JUI-F) and “other foreign hostile actors; Israel and India”. The report also accused India’s National Investigation Agency and Israeli journalists of colluding with local actors.
The report stated that the hashtags run by local elements were tantamount to national security of the country. They were aimed at maligning and ridiculing the state of Pakistan by propagating fake news in collaboration with hostile foreign powers in a concerted organized manner, the report alleged.
It stated that PTM since its inception has acted as a pressure group. It started as a movement for justice and then morphed into a political movement.
The PTM surfaced with a list of demands and just when the state was listening and paying heed to them – they kept adding more to their list of demands – to a point where they could no longer be accommodated.
“This journey from a few demands to locking horns with the state is reflected in the Twitter trends run by PTM. Their sloganeering against the state institutions have spilled into the online sphere and it has become a staple of their online presence,” the report stated.
“The dissidents with questionable motives/background, Baloch separatist, Sindhi separatist, Hostile Foreign Governments (India & Afghanistan) and any actor that wants to malign and ridicule the state institutions of Pakistan are working in unison with PTM,” it claimed.
The report has reviewed the Pakistani trend panel for over 670 days and for 125+ days PTM ran trends maligning the state institutions of Pakistan.
“PTM accused Pakistan Army of Rape, Murder, Genocide, War Crimes, Massacres, Torture, Land Grabbing, Corruption, Enforced Disappearances and running death squads to kill Pakistanis,” the report stated.
Most of their trends are for creating pressure to release their workers and operatives – with a clear aim to give the impression that they are under duress by the state institutions.
The PTM has created this impression that their voice is muzzled and they are not given due coverage by the media.
Whereas most of the op-eds and foreign publications that run Urdu franchises in Pakistan regularly publish pieces that not only cover the PTM but they tacitly give credence to their claims and objectives.
“This tacit support led to the banning of VOA Deewa and REFRL in Pakistan but despite the ban they have doubled down on working in unison with PTM,” the report stated.
It also alleged that India’s National Investigation Agency always helps PTM trends by actively engaging with and using their hashtags.
“PTM also uses hashtags that are trending in Afghanistan and India which are against Pakistan and gets it to trend in Pakistan,” it alleged.
There is a team of Wikipedia admins (mostly Indians) who are actively working to do image building for notable PTM members by publishing their profiles.
In any conflict zone there are isolated events but they hardly make it to Wikipedia but Indian Admins actively document events that PTM term as “state atrocities’.
“The same teams actively contribute to pages of Baloch separatist leadership on Wikipedia,” it stated.
According to the analytics run on all the PTM trends in the past 2 years, they have tweeted a total of three million seven hundred fifty four thousand against Pakistan and their anti- Pakistan trends have stayed on the Trended.
“Their capability to organize, execute and sustain trends have massively improved. At the beginning they had the ability to tweet out 10K tweets per hour. Now they often hit 30K+ tweets in an hour – depending on their aggregate tweets target. On Average per trend they tweet around 30K tweets,” it stated.
It also pointed out that they usually plan trends around midnight PST so their foreign participants can take part and they can get maximum international coverage for their trends.
The report cited the example that India ran a massive trend #BalochistanSolidarityDay on August 14, 2019 with over 145K tweets. The PTM started using this hashtag and led the campaign in Pakistan and got it trending for a whole day in Pakistan on the Independence Day of Pakistan.
