Viewed over , times, the video shows police officers shoving, beating and hauling hijab-wearing women into a police van. Similar videos were shared hundreds of times elsewhere on Facebook. The posts surfaced as female students from the Jamia Hafsa seminary, connected to the Lal Masjid Red Mosque in Islamabad, staged protest sit-ins in the Pakistan capital that blocked traffic following the arrest of their principal Ume Hassan on February 19 archived link. Hassan, the wife of the Red Mosque's radical cleric Abdul Aziz , was arrested for an armed attack on police and government staff archived link.
As tensions simmered following Hassan's arrest, more than police officers enforced a blockade on the roads around the Red Mosque -- the scene of a bloody week-long siege in July that left more than dead as the military sought to pacify the mosque and arrest its leaders archived here and here.
The footage circulating online, however, does not show police beating and arresting Jamia Hafsa students. The police officers in the falsely shared footage are wearing vests labelled "Sindh Police", and their uniforms correspond to those seen in an AFP photograph taken in November A combination of keyword and reverse image searches led to the same footage posted by Pakistani politicians Mohsin Dawar and Qasim Khan Suri and a report from local outlet Soch published in November archived here , here and here.
The neighbourhood in Karachi is more than 1, kilometres miles from Islamabad. The demolition of homes were part of an anti-encroachment drive led by the Karachi Development Authority, who claimed the structures were illegally occupying state land archived here and here. Local media reported at the time that the homes of more than families had been demolished, and residents said they were subjected to police brutality archived link. It urged authorities to reform its land laws and ensure no one is made homeless due to eviction, and to make sure there are adequate compensation and resettlement options.
Sign out. Return to Homepage. After students from the Jamia Hafsa seminary in Pakistan's capital Islamabad staged demonstrations calling for the release of their arrested principal, an old video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times in posts falsely claiming it showed police manhandling the female protesters. The video has in fact circulated in posts and reports about the "brutality" police employed in breaking up protests against the demolition of homes in Sindh province in November Screenshot of the false post, taken on March 7, More in World Chinese restaurant apologizes after video of diners urinating into hotpot broth goes viral CNN.
