Stale hashtags, fake photos, foreign missions: How Pakistan is prepping for another Article 370 disinformation blitz

File Photo - Indian paramilitary troopers patrol along a road in Srinagar on December 11, 2023.

Five years after India nullified Article 370 and fully integrated Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan remains trapped in its propaganda loop, rehashing falsehoods, amplifying disinformation, and staging performative outrage. On August 5, 2025, Islamabad once again observes ‘Youm-e-Istehsal’ -- a day it invented to paint India as an occupier and whitewash its own dismal human rights record in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Balochistan.

What Pakistan presents as global solidarity with Kashmiris is, in fact, a state-directed misinformation campaign involving embassies, bot networks, and separatist proxies like Mushaal Mullick (wife of the incarcerated Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik) — all geared towards vilifying India and deflecting from Pakistan’s own domestic crises.

According to a CNN-News18 report, an internal government circular dated August 1 shows that Pakistani authorities have instructed their foreign missions to observe the day with events and social media amplification. Specific embassies, including those in Brussels, Niamey, Houston, Tripoli, Budapest, and Madrid, have been roped in to stage events meant to internationalise the Kashmir issue and paint India as an oppressor.

This year’s playbook remains largely unchanged — marches, hashtags, doctored visuals, and speeches by familiar separatist sympathisers like Mushaal Mullick. While cloaked in the language of human rights, the campaign is widely seen by neutral observers as nothing more than an annual farce, devoid of credibility or factual grounding.

Pakistan’s #Youm_E_Istehsal and #KashmiriLivesMatter hashtags continue to be amplified by bot networks, fake accounts, and media briefings pushing doctored narratives. As News18 notes, the campaign “relies heavily on misinformation and orchestrated social media campaigns that distort the reality on the ground… often using recycled falsehoods, misleading content, and disinformation.”

Multiple international fact-checkers have previously debunked many of the visuals and claims pushed by these campaigns, including repurposed images from unrelated global conflicts and old protest footage presented as current.

Despite Islamabad’s attempts to portray this annual observance as a show of solidarity with Kashmiris, the real motivation is clear: a desperate push to stay relevant on the global Kashmir discourse; one that has steadily moved on from Pakistan’s tired accusations. The country’s consistent failure to rein in terror outfits operating from its soil, its own dismal human rights record in Balochistan, and its support for proxy warfare undercut any moral high ground it claims to possess.

By propping up discredited voices and staging scripted protests across embassies, Pakistan has reduced ‘Youm-e-Istehsal’ to little more than a propaganda circus -- a symbolic tantrum staged for diminishing international attention.

While India has moved forward with developmental initiatives in Jammu and Kashmir post-Article 370, Pakistan remains trapped in a regressive propaganda cycle that serves neither its global image nor the cause of peace. If anything, these repeated attempts only reinforce Pakistan’s isolation on the issue, even among Muslim-majority countries.