In the wake of the controversy over female journalists not being allowed to attend a press conference by foreign minister of Afghanistan Amir Khan Muttaqi at the Afghan embassy in Delhi on October 10, several social media users shared a photo showing Muttaqi addressing a gathering which included women. While doing so, they claimed that female reporters were actually allowed, and claims on the contrary were false and made by detractors of the Modi government.
Given the Taliban regime's history of cracking down on women's rights and agency, the controversy and the apparent rebuttal assume significance.
X user @ocjain4 posted the photo, alleging that women reporters were present at the press conference of Afghanistan's foreign minister. The caption also suggests that the controversy was riled up by the Opposition in cahoots with PM Modi's detractors. (Archive)
Note that Alt News has previously debunked several viral claims made by this user. (See here, here, here and here.)
Several other users on X, like Mukesh Joshi, Rohit Gujjar, Jasraj Godara, and others also shared the photo with the viral claim. (Archives: 1, 2, 3)
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The claim was also viral on Facebook.
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Fact Check
To verify the truth behind the claims, we ran a reverse image search on the viral photo. This led us to an X post, uploaded on the evening of October 10, by the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF India), a think tank based in New Delhi. Several women can be seen attending the event.
As readers can see, one of the photos included in tis tweet is the viral photo. So it is clear that the viral photo is not from the press conference.
Media outlets reported on Muttaqi's interaction with scholars at the VIF. Some of these reports carried the same visual as the one which went viral. The report by IANS, for example:
On the other hand, female journalists present outside the Afghan embassy for Muttaqi's press conference have confirmed that they were not allowed inside. This report by The Wire's Devirupa Mitra attests to that.
It is also worth mentioning, as this Hindustan Times article explains, the host country (India, in this case) has little jurisdiction to intervene in matters that take place in a foreign embassy. Also, on October 12, another press conference took place at the Afghan embassy -- this time, in presence of female journalists, who took front seats. Afghan foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi clarified that the exclusion of women reporters from the conference on October 10 was not deliberate, but more of a 'technical issue'.
To conclude, a photograph of Afghan foreign minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi's interaction with scholars at VIF India is being falsely shared to counter the claim that women reporters had not been allowed a press conference by Muttaqi at the Afghan embassy on October 10. The two are different events. That women were debarred from attending the press conference is well established and indubitable.
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