China is accused of hosting a cluster of fake Facebook and Instagram accounts which targeted the Sikh community across the world to propagate pro-Khalistan sentiments.
Facebook and Instagram-owner Meta said in its ‘Adversarial Threat Report’ that they removed 37 Facebook accounts, 13 pages, five groups and nine Instagram accounts for violating its policy against “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”.
“This network originated in China and targeted the global Sikh community, including in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, the UK, and Nigeria,” Meta said in its Q1 2024 Adversarial Threat Report.
Meta added that this activity included several clusters of fake accounts originating from China that targeted India and the Tibet region.
“Some of these clusters amplified one another with most of their engagement coming from their own fake accounts, likely to make this campaign more popular than it was,” Meta report added, reflecting the way the Khalistani separatist movement remains deeply denounced within the Sikh community itself.
“This operation used compromised and fake accounts — some of which were detected and disabled by our automated systems prior to our investigation — to pose as Sikhs, post content and manage Pages and Groups,” Meta further said.
China behind fictitious ‘Operation K’ online movement
China-based network created a fictitious Operation K which called for “pro-Sikh protests”, including in New Zealand and Australia, the Meta report added.
It also claimed that it found and removed this ‘Operation K’ activity before it could build an audience among authentic communities.
“They posted primarily in English and Hindi about news and current events, including images likely manipulated by photo editing tools or generated by artificial intelligence, in addition to posts about floods in the Punjab region, the Sikh community worldwide, the Khalistan independence movement, the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar and criticism of the Indian government,” Meta said.