Indian group has been running an international disinformation network against Pakistan for 15 years

[muriel_volestrangler]

There's a lot to understand here, so here's some from the start of the BBC article, and the DisinfoLab's twitter thread:

A dead professor and numerous defunct organisations were resurrected and used alongside at least 750 fake media outlets in a vast 15-year global disinformation campaign to serve Indian interests, a new investigation has revealed.
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"It is the largest network we have exposed," said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, which undertook the investigation and published an extensive report on Wednesday.

The network was designed primarily to "discredit Pakistan internationally" and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and European Parliament, EU DisinfoLab said.


"Some of the many news sites the investigation found to be fake"
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Wednesday's report, titled Indian Chronicles, reveals that the operation, run by SG, is spread over at least 116 countries and has targeted members of the European Parliament and the United Nations - raising questions about how much EU and UN staff knew about SG's activities, and whether they could have done more to counter those activities, especially after last year's report.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-55232432

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[dhill926]

1. how Russian of them...

[Karadeniz]

2. Will anyone be taken to court for this?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. 'Canners International' is truly bizarre

The former organisation:

Canners International Permanent Committee (CIPC)
Comité international permanent de la conserve (CIPC)
Comité Internacional Permanente de la Conserva
Internationaler Ständiger Ausschuss der Konserven-Wirtschaft

History
8 May 1938, Paris (France), following resolution of 1st International Congress on Canned Foods, 1937. Registered in accordance with French law. Previously referred to in English as International Permanent Committee on Canned Foods. Ceased to exist, 2007.

Aims
Assist the scientific, technical and practical progress of the canning industry; promote consumption of canned foods.

https://uia.org/s/or/en/1100028749

As we say in the UK, it did what it said on the tin.

Then we find a blog from 2013 and 2014, by "Shivam Sharma ( Editor & Co Owner Canners International ) " -
which is about ... a modelling magazine?

We are the new upcoming competitors in Entertainment industry . We give a bright platform to those who have talent. We are on our way to give fresh talents a positive platform to make themselves a part of modelling world. We give our best potential work and show good results. Our aim is to find every fresh talent those deserves to be in the modelling world .
We are searching fresh faces for our magazine to show them around the world with professional models working for the Canners Magazine.

http://cannersinternational.blogspot.com/2013/

which goes on for a few months, getting rather philosophical about goals in life, striving etc. And embeds this 1 minute video, which had a total of 39 views before I looked at it, and Shivam Sharma has a grand following of 1 on YouTube:

In June 2013 "Canners International Permanent Committee" are in an FAO list of organizations: http://www.fao.org/3/mg411e/mg411e.pdf , where "canning" looks innocuous - next to "Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU" for instance.

By Sept 2013, they're speaking at the UN Human Rights Council, saying "all human beings were born free, equal in dignity and rights, endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood, but that brotherhood was not a word one would associate with the tension in Sri Lanka."

In 2015, again to the UN Human Rights Council:

Canners International Permanent Committee spoke about the safety of children in Pakistan, which was one of the only countries in the world where boys were more vulnerable to sexual abuse than girls. The social and economic situation in the country was disastrous and forced families to make their children work. Some 11 million children worked in various industries, some 23 million children, almost 30 per cent, were deprived of a primary education, while 90 per cent of the 170,000 street children were victims of the sex trade.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15698&LangID=E

By 2016, they seem such a fixture in the UN Human Rights Council that when Rwanda, Nepal and Austria come up for their "periodic review", they not only comment on problems in Rwanda, they feel they need to say "Austria's very good, though", as if they're a major NGO who should have an opinion about everywhere: https://www.ohchr.org/en/newsevents/pages/displaynews.aspx?newsid=17241&langid=e

Here's a 2018 video of someone speaking in their name for 2 minutes to the UN Human Rights Council, decrying modern-day slavery in Pakistan:

http://webtv.un.org/topics-issues/non-governmental-organizations/canners-international-permanent-committee/#player ( Canners International Permanent Committee, Ms. Dariya Dementyeva 00:35:17 in the video)