17/12/2015
🅰🅿ℹ
Sadbhavana girls break
silence on social media ire
• ‘Controversial video
doesn’t feature Kashmiri girls on
Army tour’
• India is a free country and
everyone is entitled to their opinion:
GoC"
The 30 Kashmiri girl students, whose
pictures on the Army-sponsored
‘national integration tour’ had gone
viral on social media inviting barrage of
hate messages, sought to defend
themselves on Wednesday.
The girls said they were unaware of
their pictures being uploaded on
Facebook. After the social media wrath,
the girls said they had asked Army
officials to remove their pictures.
“We were frustrated after coming to
know how people were reacting to this
tour. It is a disappointing and
traumatizing situation for us to handle.
We didn’t know our pictures were
uploaded on FB and we inquired about
it from the army officials immediately.
They promised to remove our pictures
from FB and also assured us to probe
the incident,” the girls told
Asked whether they knew about their
photographs in casuals being uploaded
on Army’s Sadbhavana FB page, the
girls said they came to know about it
later when the photographs had already
gone viral and they were told not to
panic as Army was on job to enquire
what has happened.
“The army supported us and told us not
to panic. They helped us a lot and also
are on job to find out the person who
has uploaded a fake video with a tag
‘Kashmiri girls on sadbhavana tour
dance with army’ on it.”
“None of us is in that video and it’s not
normal who so ever has done this
mischief,” they added.
They said they are no longer worried as
Army officials have assured them to
remove their pictures.
One of the girls said they were directed
to cover their faces for sometime while
going out to be on the safer side.
Reliable sources in Army said the web
addresses have been identified by Army
headquarters Delhi and it has come to
fore that some people from Bangladesh
have made fake FB Id’s and uploaded
the video as a mischief.
“The security and safety of these girls is
our prime responsibility and we won’t
do anything that would harm them in
any case. We have identified the people
who have uploaded a fake video
attributed to these school girls and
none of these girls are in the video,”
the official said.
He added that the controversial video
features BSF personnel and not army
man.
“It was a small gathering of BSF
officials and there is no Kashmiri girl in
that video. The BSF men are celebrating
some occasion and some mischievous
people downloaded the video from
BSF’s official site and used it for
propaganda against these girls and the
Sadbhavna tour,” the army official said.
About the Army uploading pictures of
the girls on FB, the official said: “You
should ask the concerned officials about
uploading pictures on Sadbhavana
page.”
Meanwhile, the pictures and video of
these girls uploaded on FB got
hundreds of comments.
One of the FB users wrote: “It's purely
a product of ignorance and stupidity.
First, those girls agreed to visit an army
camp in spite of knowing their
"glorious" record. Second, the army
thinks that by doing all these crappy
dance and music stuff, they can put the
valley youth in a delusion. Third,
apparently stuff like that must be
happening quite often, now the
difference here being that somebody
got it on video and everyone saw it. I
suppose this is the tip of the iceberg,
the bigger of the sins must be
happening backstage, and in loads.”
Human rights activist Khurram Parvaiz
wrote on his FB timeline: “Indian army
takes Kashmiri boys, girls and Imams to
All-India tours as part of their Goodwill
Operation, with an objective to
Indianise Kashmiris.”
“Army neither cares about these people
nor considers them Indianised,
therefore it deliberately uses media and
social media to scandalize the
attendance of these children and Imams
in these tours, as a psy-op against those
in the struggle. No army will ever put
its assets on risk. So let us treat these
vulnerable people with compassion, as
they are victims of Indian army's
deceit,” he wrote.
Students of higher secondary school
Rajbagh, Nishat and Kothibagh who
took part in the tour organized by
Army’s Srinagar based 15 Chinar Corps
were all praise for Army’s “hospitality”.
The female teenage students termed it a
“motivational and encouraging”
experience.
The girls visited Delhi University and
Kala Utsav, MAMC, IIT Delhi Taj Mahal,
India Gate, Kingdom of Dreams etc. The
students also met Kailash Satyarthi,
Nobel Prize winner.
The tour titled as ‘Pariyon ki Parwaz’
was flagged in by GoC 15 Corps Lt. Gen.
Satish Dua.
“We visited IIT Delhi where India
International Science Fair is currently
underway. It was like a dream coming
true,” Fozia Yousuf, a student said.
Another student Snober Khan said the
tour was “informative and insightful”.
