ISLAMABAD – Researchers have uncovered a global network of fake websitesand NGOs being run from India for 15 years in Brussels and Geneva to malignPakistan and other enemy Asian countries.
EU Disinfo Lab’s hectic campaign, dubbed as “Indian Chronicles,” revealshow India resurrected dead media, dead think-tanks and NGOs and dead peoplefor its vested interests.
The nefarious operation led by the New-Delhi based business association,Srivastava Group, and amplified by ANI, a leading Indian news agency, beganin 2005 and is still ongoing at this date, said the researchers.
The development comes following an investigation held last year into Indiandisinformation operations in which it unearthed that the Srivastava Grouphad been spearheading a network of 265 fake media in 65 countries,including EP Today, a fake European Parliament online magazine active inBrussels since 2006.
The fake publication, investigators say, served as a ‘honeypot’ for Membersof European Parliament (MEPs) and other politicians to publish theiropinions particularly that served Indian interests in the EU.
Earlier this year, EU Disinfo Lab again launched the probe after stumblingupon “an entire network of coordinated UN-accredited NGOs promoting Indianinterests and criticizing Pakistan repeatedly.”
This probe ended up in the discovery of a fake media organisation inBrussels – EU Chronicle, which was working in lines of the EP Today.
The network is used in India to reinforce pro-Indian and anti-Pakistan (andanti-Chinese) feelings while internationally, it is used to consolidate thepower and improve the perception of India, to damage the reputation ofother countries in order to get support from the EU and the UN.
For this purposes, the network supports minority and human rights NGOs andthink-tanks, besides using MEPs to create a mirage of institutional supportfrom European institutions to these minority groups, in favour of Indianinterests and against Pakistan (and China).
It has an active presence in Geneva and the United Nations’ Human RightsCouncil by holding side-events and demonstrations in support of minorityrights, said the researchers.
The strategy of the Indian network also include the creation of fake mediain Brussels, Geneva and across the world and/or the repackaging anddissemination via ANI and obscure local media networks – at least in 97countries – to multiply the repetition of online negative content aboutcountries in conflict with India, in particular Pakistan.
“We uncovered an entire network of coordinated UN-accredited NGOs promotingIndian interests and criticizing Pakistan repeatedly. We could tie at least10 of them directly to the Srivastava family, with several other dubiousNGOs pushing the same messages,” EU Disinfo Lab said.
The researchers have called for sufficient measures to counter suchwidespread and coordinated disinformation campaigns such as the oneoutlined in Indian Chronicles.
“It is also our belief that the possibility for malicious actors to abusesearch engines by reproducing the same content hundreds of times shouldalso be challenged,” the investigator recommended.