Indian social media as well as news websites propagated highly questionable names of Chinese individuals purportedly killed in the Galwan Valley stand-off on 15 June 2020.
Upon investigation it was found the names were actually misappropriated from a Wikipedia page entry “List of generals of the People’s Republic of China”.
Indian media website News Line IFE @NewsLineIFE shared a caption using its Twitter handle “ #BreakingNews : Official notification on #PLA Casualties in #GalwanValley #Ladakh #IndiaChinaFaceOff ! 45 were confirmed before. But now looks like 11 who was in ICU passed away.” The list also contains a piece of text in Mandarin, which roughly translates to, “We express our deepest condolences to these families, and are firmly committed to protecting the sovereignty of our country.”
Created on March 2020, News Line IFE – which describes itself as a news outlet – has gained nearly 10,000 followers in just three months.
China never officially claimed any figures of casualties as a matter of policy let alone publish names of its soldiers who supposedly died from the Galwan Valley clash.
Of these 31 names were taken from the list of senior Chinese generals from 1955 and the rest were taken from those who served in 1993 to 1994.
It goes to show the entire list was fabricated by overzealous Indians using Wikipedia.
The only verified dead are at least 20 Indian Army troops including a Colonel. Approximately another 110 soldiers of the Indian Army were also injured and 10 taken captive including a Lt Colonel and three Majors and Captains.
Narendra Modi and his BJP Hindu nationalist party have been running propaganda films to depict Indian military superiority over neighbouring countries. The Indian Express writes “The soldiers are slick, the equipment state-of-the-art, and the enemy is a monster. “Terrorism”, and the death of soldiers allows Indian forces to torture, kill without trial.” It goes hand in hand with the extremist views of India’s ruling party.
