Fake videos fuel fear as north Indian migrants in Tamil Nadu head home for festival

BENGALURU - North Indian workers in Tamil Nadu – a state in the country’s south – are thronging train stations to go home for an upcoming festival. But there is also an element of fear.

Since early March, a few fake videos on WhatsApp and Twitter have fuelled rumours of attacks on migrant workers from northern states. Police have booked several opposition politicians in Tamil Nadu for sharing the fake videos on social media.

Mr Kishan Yadav, 32, who has worked in an electronics factory in Chennai’s outskirts for four years, was heading to the railway station on Monday to catch a train to Bihar.

He was going home for Holi, the festival of colours to be celebrated in north India on Wednesday, and to assuage the worries of his wife, who had watched a horrific video that made her fear for his safety.

“My wife saw that fake video of Tamilians beating north Indian workers. I told her I was safe, but she is still scared,” said Mr Yadav.

Police officials trying to manage the crowds in train stations said there was “always a rush before Holi”, but the “level of panic this year is causing chaos”.

Industrial clusters in the southern state of Tamil Nadu have among India’s largest concentration of migrant workers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.

A 2016 state government survey estimated that more than 1.06 million migrant workers are employed in Tamil Nadu, most of them unskilled. Among the rest, 27 per cent work in manufacturing, 14 per cent in the textile industry and 11.4 per cent in the construction sector.

Since fake videos of attacks on northern workers surfaced online a few days ago, officials have largely controlled the unrest by acting swiftly.

Tamil Nadu director-general of police C. Sylendra Babu clarified last Thursday that the videos were of brawls that had happened earlier, and were “false” and “mischievous”.

“The clash was not between Tamil Nadu people and migrant workers. One was a clash between two groups of Bihar migrant workers (in Tiruppur) and another video was a clash between two local residents of Coimbatore,” Mr Babu said.

The police issued this statement in Hindi as well for the migrant workers.

Another video that shows people running on a road, with fire and smoke visible, was shared by an Instagram user with a caption in Hindi reading: “Tamil citizens are killing Biharis and also murdering them.” It had 17,000 views and 1000 likes last Saturday. 

The Logical Indian (

https://str.sg/iksr

), a fact-checking website in India, identified this video to have originated from Abeokuta, Nigeria. They were reportedly scenes of violent demonstrations by people struggling to buy essentials after the government there announced demonetisation. 

On Sunday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said he spoke to Mr Nitish Kumar, his counterpart in Bihar, and assured him that no harm would come to the migrant workers, who were “our brothers in development”.

The Greater Chennai police’s cybercrime wing has filed complaints against social media influencers, some journalists and politicians, including Mr K. Annamalai, the state chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for posting fake videos and “provocative” tweets about unsubstantiated allegations of attacks on migrant labourers from the north.

It has also accused the BJP’s official Bihar state Twitter account of sharing fake videos that “promoted unrest”.

Mr Annamalai said he was “disheartened” by the fake news but did not back down, challenging the police to arrest him for exposing the state’s “seven-decade propaganda against north Indians”.

Although the BJP is the ruling party in the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it is a minor player in the southern state that is governed by Mr Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a regional party.

Leaders from the DMK and BJP often have fierce debates in Parliament and the media on the forced imposition of Hindi, alleged neglect of non-BJP states in tax allocations, power sharing between states and the centre, and issues like religion and caste, on which the parties hold disparate views. 

After a video of a Tamil speaker abusing and assaulting Hindi-speaking migrant labourers went viral in February, the police arrested the accused, Mr Magimaidas, 38, of Villupuram, but BJP politicians in Tamil Nadu claimed it was only one instance of widespread discrimination against migrants there. Subsequently, fake videos started to emerge. 

To control any fallout in Tiruppur, where garment and textile factories employ thousands, the police have created a team to help migrant labourers stay aware of the fake videos, or respond quickly if they face attacks. 

This week, the police have been cracking down on people taking photos of the crowds at train stations. 

“We seized dozens of phones and deleted the photos and videos to avoid panic. People are shooting videos and posting them online. Then, some mischief makers are using those photos to falsely claim that these crowds are leaving to escape violence,” said a senior police officer at the Chennai central railway station. 

Mr Mukesh Kumar Thakur, secretary of the Bihar Association in Chennai, said none of the departing workers had faced any attacks.

“The workers will return, because they need to. I request people not to play with their safety,” he said.