Pashtuns, the second-largest ethnic group in Pakistan after the majority Punjabis, have their own language, and also live in neighbouring Afghanistan (archived link).
They have suffered as a result of successive military campaigns to root out Pakistani Taliban militants active in the border regions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where they are the majority ethnic group (archived link). Pashtun rights activists have called for an end to military operations and accused security forces of arbitrary killings and detentions of Pashtuns in their sweeping crackdown (archived link).
The military is also waging a battle against separatist groups in southwestern Balochistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, and where the majority of Pakistan’s minority Baloch ethnic group lives (archived link).
There have been ongoing protests accusing security forces of abuses against civilians in their bid to root out militants. Separatist militants pulled passengers off buses, blew up a bridge and stormed a hotel on August 26 in coordinated attacks in Balochistan that left dozens of people dead (archived link).
The video made the rounds in similar X posts here and here.
But the footage in fact shows dummies of prisoners at a war memorial in Vietnam.
Vietnam prison
“The video was filmed at the French Tiger Cages, located in the Con Dao Special National Relic Site,” a Con Dao management board official told AFP in Hanoi on September 26.
Con Dao prison was established by French colonial authorities in 1861 to imprison opponents of their rule, earning a reputation for the use of torture against those incarcerated there. In 1954, the prison was taken over by the US-backed South Vietnamese government, which continued to detain political opponents. The prison was shut down in 1975 (archived link).
AFP photos of a different cell at Con Dao Island, here and here, show that the supposed prisoners were not real people, but dummies representing the former prisoners.
Below is a screenshot of an AFP photo:
The caption on the photo read: “Phung Thi Huong guides visitors in a cell at Poulo Condor, a former prison, where 80 dummies simulate the detention conditions of political prisoners housed there until 1975. More than 200,000 people were incarcerated in the prison on Con Dao Island under horrendous conditions, of whom 20,000 were killed by torture, malaria, typhoid, hunger or exhaustion.”
Keyword searches led to a Facebook post from August 19, which contained photos that showed similar scenes to those seen in the false post (archived link).
“Con Dao is the place where French colonialists and American imperialists used to arrest and torture patriotic fighters. Coming here, we would be penetrated with the pain that revolutionary prisoners had to experience,” the Vietnamese-language caption of the post said in part.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and the Facebook post with photos showing similar scenes in Con Dao (right):
A YouTube video published on July 31 also shows prison cells at a Con Dao memorial which resembles the cells shown in the false post (archived link).
Local media Vietnamnet Global also published several photos of the dummies in cells known as “tiger cages” in an article on January 25, 2023 (archived link).
