EDITORIAL: In its report titled "Indian Chronicles" EU DisinfoLab, an independent non-profit organization, focused on tackling sophisticated disinformation campaigns targeting the European Union's core institutions and values, has uncovered shocking details of an Indian network's operations designed primarily to "discredit Pakistan internationally" and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and European Parliament. The report found direct links between a Delhi-based holding company, Srivastava Group (SG) which used at least 10 UN-accredited NGOs, numerous defunct organizations as well as the identity of a human rights law expert who died aged 92 in 2006, for disinformation campaign promoting India's anti-Pakistan propaganda. In Geneva, says the report, think-tanks and NGOs were in charge of lobbying, organizing protest demonstrations, and taking the floor at the UNHRC on behalf of accredited organizations. In Brussels, the focus was on the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). They were taken on international trips (such as taking some right wing MEPs on a guided trip to the besieged Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir) and solicited to write "exclusive" op-eds for fake outlets like EU Chronicle, which would then be amplified using India's largest wire service, ANI.
Little surprise then, that the investigation discovered several hundred pro-India interventions by the non-accredited organizations, pursuing the same agenda of maligning Pakistan. On other occasions, NGOs and organizations, which apparently had nothing to do with Pakistan or India, would get the opportunity to speak at the UNHRC and target Pakistan. Although authors of the Indian Chronicles refrained from linking SG's activities to the Indian government, common sense suggests a private company would neither have the financial resources nor the motive to run such a huge and sophisticated propaganda operation. The DisinfoLab only substantiates what Pakistan has been saying for a while: that India is engaged in hybrid warfare against this country, blending irregular warfare - terrorist attacks, so-called strategic strikes, and relentless shelling across the Line of Control and the Working Boundary - with propaganda through social media, fake news, and diplomacy. Indian Chronicles shows how important organizations can be manipulated by certain countries to spread false narratives against rival nations.
Notably, the DisinfoLab had exposed some of the Indian network's activities last year, but the relevant decision makers failed to take notice of the abuse of UN and EU institutions, apparently because of the big three European countries' as well as the US' economic and geopolitical interests. Executive Director of the EU DisinfoLab, Alexandre Alaphilippe, has expressed the lament that following 2019 investigation there had been "no official communication, no sanction, nothing. This passivity gave a message to Indian Chronicles: you've been exposed, but no consequences." This raises the question if the present report, too, is to be ignored with the same indifference as the previous one, or there would some consequences. One could not agree more with Alaphilippe's assertion that the biggest failure of institutions would be if another report is released next year on the same actors with the same techniques, adding, "this would mean that the EU institutions are ok with foreign interference."
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020