Pakistan Continues To Play The Double Game Needs A Fresh Battering
An analysis of Khalistani online propaganda done between April 2018 and April 2019 reveals that the amount of pro-Khalistan content on Twitter posts have increased from 161 to 1,181, the number of YouTube propaganda videos from 208 to 1,374, and the number of Facebook posts to 1,439 from 556.
Social media analytics confirm that pro-Khalistan campaigns on social media have seen a resurgence after India and Pakistan started on-ground work on the Kartarpur corridor in November 2018.
There are enough indications to show that even if Pakistan may have banned pro-Khalistan activity on its soil, it has not stopped its intelligence agency ISI from continuing to fund and support online activities in favour of a separate Sikh state. The ISI has been funding pro-Khalistan activities like Referendum 2020, which its website calls “a campaign to liberate Punjab, currently occupied by India”.
Pakistan has been putting focus on spreading Khalistani propaganda online, being the cheapest, most cost-effective way to spread propaganda. Pakistan has been funding and supporting these efforts through out.
Social media is being used to run misinformation campaigns, to run movements like Referendum 2020, to idolize banned organisations like the Khalistan Liberation Force, to gather monetary funding, and to spread propaganda by selling T-shirts.
All movements like Referendum 2020 are funded by ISI through pro-Khalistani lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal advisor of Sikhs for Justice, the organisation which heads the movement.
According to an April 2019 report, Pakistan had banned Referendum 2020-linked activity on its soil at the request of India. However, several pro-Khalistan social media accounts and websites, including those linked to Referendum 2020, can be traced back to Pakistan. Pakistan is unofficially supporting Referendum 2020 even on the ground.
In the last four or five years, the Khalistan movement had gained considerable traction on the ground with the help of Pakistan’s ISI. There are physical posters of Referendum 2020 in Pakistan, some of them large enough to cover a Gurudwara.
Pakistan’s Khalistani proxies have been able to revive the movement in a robust way through protests and petitions like Referendum 2020 — there are Pakistani fingerprints all over this.
For instance Khalistan support groups in Canada are openly supported by Pakistani diplomats who are undercover ISI agents. The social media movement for Khalistan increased especially since work on the Kartarpur Corridor was announced by India and Pakistan in November 2018.
