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  • 2022-06-30 (xsd:date)
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  • False posts claim former Indian party official 'sentenced to death for blasphemy' (en)
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  • A video has been viewed more than one million times after it was shared in social media posts claiming that an Indian ruling party spokeswoman had been sentenced to death for blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed. However, a representative from Bharatiya Janata Party denied the claim, which circulated after its spokeswoman, Nupur Sharma, made comments that sparked global outrage among Muslim communities. Meanwhile, the footage shows various protests in India unrelated to the row. Finally, the Indian spokeswoman who blasphemed Prophet Muhammad has been sentenced to death, reads an Indonesian-language Facebook post shared on June 9, 2022. India's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suspended its spokeswoman Nupur Sharma in June 2022 after her comments about the Prophet Mohammed, which she made during a broadcast debate in the previous month, sparked outrage across the Islamic world. The seven-minute, 26-second video, which has garnered more than 1.7 million views, shows various clips of protests, while a narrator reads from Indonesian news reports about Sharma. Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on June 29, 2022 The same video was shared in similar posts on Facebook here and here , while a slightly longer video was posted on YouTube here . However, the claim is false. AFP found no credible media reports about Sharma being sentenced to death, as of June 30, 2022. Contacted by AFP, a representative at BJP's head office in Delhi said there has been no incident of murder or any related incident with Sharma. While there is no separate law for the blasphemy of Prophet Mohammed in India, insulting religion or hurting religious sentiments can be punishable by three years' imprisonment or a fine or both, according to Section 295A of the South Asian country's penal code . The narrator heard in the footage is reading from three Indonesian media reports about Sharma here , here and here . None of them claim she was been sentenced to death. Furthermore, most of the clips in the video were taken from protests and events unrelated to and predate the Sharma row. One of the clips shows a December 2019 rally depicted in a Voice of America report headlined Mass Protest in India Over 'Anti-Muslim' Law. Some other clips in the video were taken from the hijab controversy in India's Karnataka state in February 2022. One shows hijab-wearing female students being prevented from entering campus, while another shows Hindu students staging an anti-hijab protest . Below are screenshots of the misleading video (left) and the genuine videos that predate the Sharma row (right): Screenshots of the misleading video (left) and the genuine videos that predate the Sharma row (right) AFP has previously debunked a string of false claims around the Sharma row, including here , here and here . (en)
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