Conspiracy theories absurd, no hand in stars' tweets: Mo Dhaliwal

Item

Title

Conspiracy theories absurd, no hand in stars' tweets: Mo Dhaliwal

Description

Canada-based Poetic Justice Foundation (PJF) has issued a statement claiming that it neither coordinated any protest activities within India nor coordinated with Rihanna, Greta Thunberg or any other celebrity to make them tweet in support of the farmers' protests. PJF is being investigated by the Delhi Police for being part of an alleged conspiracy to create disharmony and for creating the toolkit shared by Greta Thunberg. The statement issued by Mo Dhaliwal and Anita Lal, co-founders of PJF, held that information being spread about their organisation "is in many cases incorrect and, too often, entirely invented". They said that it was a "concerted effort and a purposeful distraction" from the story about over 200 lives lost in the farmers protest. "The complex and absurd conspiracies being constructed to link Poetic Justice Foundation to any number of actors worldwide are entirely fiction. Poetic Justice Foundation did not coordinate any protest activities occurring within India," they said. "Poetic Justice Foundation did not coordinate Rihanna, Greta Thunberg or any number of specific celebrities to tweet about the #FarmersProtest. We didn't pay anyone to tweet - and certainly didn't pay anyone $2.5m to do so," the statement said. The statement added: "However, we did generally encourage the entire world to share this issue. Through the international collective of organisers we encouraged the world to pay attention and amplify this message." "We were drawn to the farmers' protest due to our connection and love for our people" the statement read. "We decided to bring a question to the democracy of India. We would ask India 'Why?' We developed key messages that were researched and fact-based. We gathered up all of this thinking and made it publicly available on a website called AskIndiaWhy.com," it read.

Publisher

The Times of India

Date

2021-02-07

Coverage

India