Fact-check: Posters requesting army chief to seek extension are fake

As per social media posts, posters have appeared in cities across the country to convince Pakistan’s military chief to stay in office post his retirement, which is due later this month.

The posters are fake.

Claim

On November 6, an image began circulating on social media which showed a roadside banner with a picture of Pakistan’s chief of army staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa. The text on the banner read: “For God’s sake, stop talking about leaving.”

The banners had been published by an organisation by the name of “Move On Pakistan”.

After the images appeared, social media users began asking if the image were authentic or not.

Fact

The image is fake and has been photoshopped.

The original posters appeared in January and July of 2016 and carried a picture of then-army chief General (retd) Raheel Sharif, a few months before his retirement. The caption of the January posters was the same as the photoshopped image.

While the posters that appeared in July also appeal to General (retd) Raheel Sharif and read: “Talk of leaving it now old, for God’s sake come back.”

Those posters were printed by a little-known organisation, Move on Pakistan.

“This picture was of General Raheel Sharif and someone had edited it,” Mian Yasir, the previous general secretary of Move on Pakistan and who claims to also be a former journalist, told Geo Fact Check over the phone “We had started a campaign back then [in 2016] by the name of Move on Pakistan.”

Another member of Move on Pakistan, who only identified himself as Ali, also told Geo Fact Check that the image was “fake and had been reedited.” 

He further said that an application had been moved in the Federal Investigation Agency to proceed against the false image.

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