Hazara are one of the ethnic groups of Afghanistan and have been subjects of persecution in Afghanistan since decades. Till date Hazara community of Afghanistan faces discrimination and are subjected to severe human rights violations.
Recently some images are being shared on social media along with the #StopHazaragenocide with context to the atrocities committed against the Hazara community of Afghanistan.
The Twitter user writes: More than 63% of the total population of Hazaras were massacred and some of them were displaced and exiled by migrating to Pakistan and Iran and other nearby areas. Hazara land was distributed between the Pashtun immigrants and the aggressors. #StopHazaraGenocide
However, Fact Crescendo’s findings show that some unrelated images are being shared with context to alleged ethnic cleansing of the Hazara community in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Fact check:
The social media claims are however not totally false. Hazara community of Afghanistan has witnessed heinous crimes against humanity like genocide over decades. However, some images which are being shared in context to Hazara Genocide are unrelated to the persecution of Hazaras.
We applied Google reverse image search on all the shared images to find out the truth behind all the shared images. Upon investigation we found that some images are being shared out of context and unrelated to the Hazara community or Afghanistan.
First image
While applying Google image search we found that the first image is old. The shared image shows human remains however the viral image is not related to any genocide of the persecuted Hazara community.
The image actually shows the skeletons of the soldiers killed during the Battle of Himera (Palermo) between the Greeks and Carthage. The image of the mass grave of soldiers who died in the battle of Himera was clicked by Stefano Vasallo. You can see an aerial shot of the mass grave published by The New York Times in the screenshot given below.
Second image
While investigating, we found that the second image is also old and is being shared with misleading context. According to an article published by a website named INFORMATION NIGERIA on 23 March 2015, the image was clicked after a mass grave of about 100 Boko Haram victims was found in Nigeria.
Information Nigeria Archived Link
Third Image
By applying Google reverse image search, we found that Image shows the victims of Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire during first World war when thousands of Armenians were tortured and killed, not Hazara victims of Genocide in Afghanistan.
Fourth Image
This image is also old and is being shared in context to the attempted Genocide over Hazaras. The similar image was published by a website named ARTWORK ONLY.COM. According to the article published by the article the image actually is “The Apotheosis of War” is a painting by Russian war painter Vasily Vereshchagin.
Fifth image
While investigation, we found that shared image belonged to the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. Similar image was published attributed to the victims of Rwanda Genocide by a website named NEWS on 19 September 2005.
However, some of the shared images actually belong to the Hazara Persecution in Afghanistan and atrocities committed against the Shia Hazaras of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but most of the images shared by the Twitter users are unrelated to Hazara Genocide cause of Afghanistan.
Conclusion
From the above investigation, it is clear that some unrelated images are also being shared on social media with context to the Hazara Genocide on Twitter.
Title:Unrelated images again shared as Hazara Genocide.
Fact Check By: Fact Crescendo TeamResult: Misleading
