By Srijit Das
A video of a Pakistani minority leader speaking about forced Islamic conversions has been circulating on social media misleadingly claiming that it shows a Hindu politician begging for mercy with folded hands in the parliament of Pakistan.
BOOM found that the person in the video is Tariq Masih Gill, a minority leader in Pakistan, who belongs to the Christian community.
The 2:20 minute-long viral video shows the leader speaking about forced Islamic conversions in the country to the speaker of the parliament. He can also be heard seeking for mercy with folded hands in a request to take action against such atrocities over the minorities in Pakistan.
The video is captioned as, "See how a Hindu MP is begging for mercy in Pak Parliament with folded hands... that have mercy on us, spare our daughters... This video is dedicated to those secular people who give us knowledge on religion".
Click here to view the post.
Click here to view the post.
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Fact Check
BOOM first performed a keyword search for "minority conversion national assembly Pakistan" while looking for reports on conversations about the forced religious conversions in the parliament of Pakistan.
The search led us to The Express Tribune report mentioning about a "minority convention" which was held for the first time in the country's parliamentary history in August 2022. The event was organised to recall Muhammad Ali Jinnah's speech on the freedom and equality of minorities in 1947.
Taking a cue, we searched for posts on the official Facebook profile of National Assembly of Pakistan and found pictures of the event which was held on August 11, 2022.
Click here to view the post.
We then looked for the videos from the event on the Pakistani state-run broadcaster PTV News' YouTube channel PTV Parliament which covers the country's parliament proceedings.
The minority convention event was streamed live on PTV Parliament's YouTube channel on August 11, 2022. We noticed that the speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf identifies the person in the viral video as Tariq Masih Gill at the 37:04 timestamp.
The same speech can be heard from 40:23 minutes to 42:22 minutes time mark when compared to the viral video.
According to the official website of the Pakistan's Punjab provisional assembly, Tariq Masih Gill belongs to the Christian community and a leader from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party. Gill was elected as a member of the assembly in general elections 2013.
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