The Prime Minister of Pakistan Punjab Province Maryam Nawaz Sharif was criticized for flying abroad while the province was dealing with record levels of pollution in November 2024, but a video circulating on social media does not show her being harassed at the airport. The clip previously circulated in September 2023 reporting on Maryam’s return to Lahore from a trip abroad – and its audio was altered to make it sound as if the crowd was hostile towards her.
“Maryam Nawaz left for Geneva from Lahore Airport,” read the caption in Urdu for a video posted on X on November 6, 2024.
The video, which has been viewed more than 100,000 times, appears to show the Punjab chief minister walking through a crowd chanting: “Maryam’s father is a thief!”
Maryam’s father is three-time Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif. who never managed to serve a full term and was dogged by allegations of corruption (archived link). Nawaz’s younger brother, Shehbaz, is the country’s current prime minister.
Screenshot of the fake X-post, captured on November 15, 2024
The messages were also shared here and here on X.
They spread as Maryam came under criticism for flying to Geneva, allegedly to seek medical treatment, and then to London, while Pakistan suffered record levels of air pollution in November 2024 (archived links here and here).
Punjab – home to more than half of Pakistan’s 240 million people – ordered the closure of schools in several major cities surrounded by smog, a mix of fog and pollutants caused by low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal fires in agriculture and cooling in winter.
However, the video circulating online does not show the Punjab Chief Minister being harassed at the airport.
Old video
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage shared here and here on September 26, 2023 by X accounts affiliated with Maryam’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) (archived links here and here).
One of the messages reads: “PML-N chief organizer Maryam Nawaz has reached Lahore airport.”
Below is a screenshot comparison between the video used in the fake message (left) and the video posted on X in September 2023 (right):
Screenshot comparison between the video used in the fake message (left) and the video posted on X in September 2023 (right)
The footage was also used by ARY News and HUM News on YouTube (archived links here and here).
According to news articles from The Nation and The News International, Maryam returned from London, where she attended party talks (archived links here and here).
The footage shared in September 2023 also contained different audio than the clip shared in November 2024. You heard the people around Maryam chanting: “Daughter of the nation, voice of the nation, Maryam Nawaz, Maryam Nawaz” – instead of bothering her. .
AFP has previously fact-checked dubbed or old misleading videos of Pakistani politicians here and here.
