Twitter user @captjasdeep, who claims to be an Indian armed forces veteran in his bio, tweeted an image of soldiers on snowy terrain and wrote, “I hope our country knows that Canadian Army is giving winter warfare training to Chinese PLA in Canada.” (archived link) The tweet drew over 1,600 retweets and more than 5,000 likes as of this writing.
Facebook page Defence360 posted the viral image along with three other images in which Chinese soldiers can be seen.
#Important
Canadian Army giving winter warfare training to Chinese PLA to deal with Indian Army in Peaks & Mountains…
Posted by DEFENCE360 on Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Image from 2014 shared with false claim
Image 1: Soldiers in snowy terrain
Alt News performed a reverse image search on Yandex and found that the image was posted in December 2014. The Joint Delegation of Canada to NATO tweeted the image and wrote, “#Canadian soldiers training in Canada’s #Arctic, February 2014.” Twitter accounts of the Canadian Armed Forces and Canadian Army have been tagged.
#Canadian soldiers training in Canada’s #Arctic, February 2014. pic.twitter.com/vkVJUir3Ei
— Canada at NATO
(@CanadaNATO) December 6, 2014
Images 2, 3 and 4
The images by Facebook page Defence360 were tweeted by Candian Army in 2018. As per the tweet, “The #Army deployed a team of four observers from the Canadian Army Advanced Warfare Centre to China. The Chinese PLA accepted a reciprocal invitation from the CA to observe winter survival training in Petawawa. #StrongSecureEngaged #StrongProudReady”.
#FactFriday – The #Army deployed a team of four observers from the Canadian Army Advanced Warfare Centre to China. The Chinese PLA accepted a reciprocal invitation from the CA to observe winter survival training in Petawawa. #StrongSecureEngaged#StrongProudReadypic.twitter.com/eARdeIXggz
— Canadian Army (@CanadianArmy) February 9, 2018
Since 2018, neither Canadian Armed Forces nor Canadian Army has posted images of the drill with China. In 2020, Canada cancelled military drill with China. The Week reported, Canada’s Department of Global Affairs, the country’s foreign ministry, responded to the cancellation of the military exercises with China by stating, “Given the heightened scrutiny, any decision by Canada to reduce/cut ties should be carefully considered to avoid sending any unhelpful or unintended messages.”
Thus, Twitter user @captjasdeep shared a 2014 image with a false claim that the Canadian Army is giving winter warfare training to Chinese PLA in Canada. Similarly, Facebook page Defence360 also posted old images. They were tweeted by the Candian Army in 2018.
Recently Indian Navy veteran Harinder S Sikka posted an image of a Sikh man praying in a mosque that dates back to at least 2016 with the false claim that he forgot to remove his turban after returning to a mosque from the farmers’ protest
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
