ISLAMABAD – A vast network of Indian fake news websites in dozens ofcountries have been created to promote Indian diplomatic interests,especially New Delhi’s criticism of Pakistan, a European news watchdog saysin a reportlink.
The Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab, an NGO, has discovered 265 bogus mediaoutlets in 65 countries that are managed by what it calls an ‘Indianinfluence network’, which has in recent months tried to whitewash India’sannexation of disputed Kashmir territory.
But Alexandre Alaphilippe, DisinfoLab’s executive director, told *TRTWorld* thatthey have no evidence to establish a link between the websites and theIndian government.
Many of the websites, which are also linked to obscure human rights groups, share each other’s content, layering stories in ways that make itdifficult for readers to find the source of the information.
A cursory look at some of these websites shows that they disproportionatelyreport on the treatment of minorities in Pakistan including the problems ininsurgency-hit Balochistan province.
Under the garb of names such as The American Weekly, Times of Bulgaria andTimes of Cyprus, this network tries to give itself a cover of legitimacy,according to the DisInfo Lab’s database.
Many of them have social media accounts.
The network of fake news websites, two of which have been traced toPakistan, were used to target policymakers in the United States and theEuropean Union.
This is the first time DisinfoLab has come across a disinformation networkof this scale, said Alaphilippe.
Caught in the act
This Indian disinformation network was uncovered in October when DisInfoLab looked into a complaint that eptoday.comlink, aself-proclaimed magazine of the European Parliament, was recycling storiesfrom Russia Today and Voice of America.
“Among this syndicated content, we unexpectedly found a large number ofarticles and op-eds related to minorities in Pakistan as well as otherIndia-related matters.”
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DisInfo Lab linked Eptoday to a controversial India-based Srivastava Group,an umbrella organisation with a host of think tanks and NGOs under itsname.
Srivastava recently came under scrutiny after Indian journalists found thatit’s behind the little-known think tank the International Institute forNon-Aligned Studies, which organised a visit of European rightwingparliamentarians to disputed Kashmir late last month.
The watchdog’s investigation revealed another news outlet -timesofgeneva.com.
“Strangely enough, Times of Geneva publishes the same type of content as EPToday and produces videos covering events and demonstrations criticisingPakistan’s role in the Kashmir conflict.”
The news organisations also share the same server as so-called NGOs theEuropean Organisation for Pakistani Minorities and Pakistani Women’s HumanRights Organisation, which are critical of Islamabad.
“Specifically, the websites of these NGOs and think tanks are hosted on thesame servers and/or staff have worked for one of these previousorganisations while publishing articles for EP Today.”
Ultimately, the investigation led to the unearthing of more than 265 mediaoutlets, many of which are named after extinct local newspapers andrepublish anti-Pakistan content from the websites such as EP Today andTimes of Geneva.
“We found the same infrastructure – servers, IPs or emails – (of thesewebsites) linked to the servers used by the Srivastava group,” saidAlaphilippe.
Some of the content on the websites has been pulled down sinceDisinfoLab’s report came out on Wednesday.
