The video shows a memorial in a Vietnam prison, not a torture cell in Pakistan

Pashtuns, the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan after the majority of Punjabis, have their own language and also live in neighboring Afghanistan (archived link).

They have suffered from successive military campaigns to eradicate Pakistani Taliban militants active in the border regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where they form the majority of the ethnic group (archived link). Pashtun rights activists have called for an end to military operations and accused security forces of carrying out arbitrary killings and detentions of Pashtuns in their sweeping crackdown (archived link).

The military is also waging a battle against separatist groups in the southwestern Balochistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran and is home to the majority of Pakistan's Baloch ethnic group (archived link).

There have been ongoing protests accusing security forces of abuses against civilians in their attempt to root out militants. On August 26, separatist militants pulled passengers from buses, blew up a bridge and stormed a hotel in coordinated attacks in Balochistan that left dozens dead (archived link).

The video made the rounds in similar X-posts Here and here.

However, the footage actually shows dummy prisoners at a war memorial in Vietnam.

Vietnam prison

“The video was filmed in the French tiger cages located in the special national relic site of Con Dao,” an official from the Con Dao board told AFP in Hanoi on September 26.

Con Dao Prison was established by French colonial authorities in 1861 to imprison opponents of their rule and gained a reputation for using torture against those imprisoned there. In 1954, the prison was taken over by the US-backed South Vietnamese government, which continued to imprison political opponents. The prison closed in 1975 (archived link).

AFP photos of another cell on Con Dao Island, here and here, show that the supposed prisoners were not real people but dummies portraying the former prisoners.

Below is a screenshot of an AFP photo:

The caption read: “Phung Thi Huong leads visitors through a cell at Poulo Condor, a former prison where 80 puppets simulate the conditions of political prisoners held there until 1975. More than 200,000 people were imprisoned in Con Dao Island prison in terrible conditions, of whom 20,000 were killed by torture, malaria, typhoid fever, starvation or exhaustion.

Keyword searches led to a Facebook post from August 19 that contained photos depicting scenes similar to those in the false post (archived link).

“Con Dao is the place where French colonialists and American imperialists once arrested and tortured patriotic fighters. When we came here, we would be imbued with the pain endured by revolutionary prisoners,” the post’s Vietnamese caption read in part.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the fake post (left) and the Facebook post with photos showing similar scenes in Con Dao (right):

A YouTube video posted on July 31 also shows prison cells at a Con Dao memorial site similar to the cells shown in the false post (archived link).

Local media Vietnamnet Global also published several photos of the dummies in cells known as “tiger cages” in an article dated January 25, 2023 (archived link).