Fact Check: Video of a man speaking about forced Islamic conversions in Pakistan makes a false claim
A video of a man speaking about forced Islamic conversion of minorities in Pakistan is being widely shared on social media. The man rendering an emotional speech is claimed to be a Hindu MP of Pakistan and is begging for mercy on Hindu children. The claim is viral on all platforms of social media.
A video of a man speaking about forced Islamic conversion of minorities in Pakistan is being widely shared on social media. The man rendering an emotional speech is claimed to be a Hindu MP of Pakistan and is begging for mercy on Hindu children. The claim is viral on all platforms of social media.
In the 2.20-minute video, we can hear him narrating how a 12-year-old girl was forced into Islam. Later, he is seen pleading mercy with folded hands, requesting the authorities to take action against the atrocities over the minorities in Pakistan.
The video is shared with the caption “See how a Hindu MP is begging for mercy in Pak Parliament with folded hands... that have mercy on us, spare our daughters...”
Fact Check:
The claim that the person seen in the video is a Hindu MP in Pakistan is Misleading. He is a Christian politician from Pakistan and this video is not recent.
When we performed Google reverse image search using the image extracted from the video and the keywords MP, we found a Reddit post that shared the same video with the title “Tariq Masih Gill, a Christian MP in Pakistan talks of the pain of their little girls being abducted.”
Taking a cue from this, when we changed the keywords to ‘Tariq Masih Gill in Parliament’, we found several results. We found a YouTube video published by NY News on August 20, 2022, with the title “Member of Provincial Assembly Tariq Masih Gill bold speech at National Assembly of Pakistan on forced religious conversions”. According to the about page of the channel, NY News is a Pakistani news channel in Urdu.
It was posted by the channel named Tariq Masih Gill MPA (Member of Provincial Assembly) too.
The video can be seen on the YouTube channel PTV Parliament which covers Pakistan’s Parliament proceedings. As compared to the viral video, the same speech can be seen from 40.22 minutes to 42.22 minutes of the video published on PTV Parliament on August 11, 2022.
When we checked on the official website of the Provincial Assembly of Punjab, we found that Mr. Tariq Masih Gill has been a Parliamentary secretary: Human Rights and Minorities Affairs and he followed Christianity and not a Hindu
Hence, the man giving an emotional speech about forced conversions in Pakistan is not a Hindu, he belongs to the Christian community. The claim is Misleading.