How the Indian disinformation machine in Brussels is twisting the Kashmir conflict into a war against jihadism

“I would like to express my warmest and most sincere greetings to Prime Minister Modi on this Indian Independence Day. It is a pleasure to see India excel under your dynamic leadership at a time when the world is struggling against Covid-19.” This friendly message is from French National Rally MEP Thierry Mariani in a video posted on Twitter on 14 August by the online newspaper EU Chronicle, whose Twitter account was suspended after these revelations. Never heard of EU Chronicle (1)? Unsurprising: it was a fake news outlet set up to serve India's interests. This was revealed in the "Indian Chronicles", the revelations by the NGO EU DisinfoLab, to which Les Jours had access, which shed light on an impressive machine of disinformation and influence.

Nicolas Sarkozy's former transport minister was not the only one to express sympathy for the Indian prime minister on that day. Former Polish European Parliament vice-president Ryszard Czarnecki (PIS, conservative and eurosceptic) and Italian MEP Fulvio Martusciello (Forza Italia) also featured in videos broadcast the same day on the same Twitter account. 

Indian Chronicles

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At the UN: zombie NGOs in the service of Delhi’s narrative

How the Indian disinformation machine in Brussels is twisting the Kashmir conflict into a war against jihadism

Right in the heart of Europe, a secret and influential disinformation network does Delhi’s dirty work

EU Chronicle is not just on Twitter. Behind it, there is a young newspaper, available only online, which first appeared in May 2020. Despite a website with a basic design and very modest presence on social networks (only 400 subscribers on Twitter, no Facebook page), the newspaper strikes an ambitious pose. It promises its readers "a world of knowledge, wisdom and truth" where current events are treated in a new way. Looking more closely, the site appears simply to be an aggregation of dispatches and press releases. And yet it claims to work with real “freelance journalists” in Brussels. But here too, there is reason for doubt.

In its report published on 9 December the NGO EU DisinfoLab had fun retracing the day of an EU Chronicle “journalist”, based on her activity on 29 October. Rita Storen, one of the outlet’s main contributors, seems to have started work at midnight and left her office at 18:40. In this long stretch she made a lot of mistakes while copying press releases and writing one-sentence stories. Rita Storen, whose existence appears limited to this site, looks more like a bot than a “freelance journalist” frequenting the Place de Bruxelles.

Further analysis of the site reveals a preliminary clue linking the EU Chronicle to the Srivastava group, which is behind the major influence operation detailed here. The IP address is the same as the one registered by some of the group's NGOs. Moreover, the “newspaper” appears to work in the same way as another site singled out by EU DisinfoLab in its previous report, “EP Today” (EP referring to European Parliament). That outlet, also linked to the Srivastava group, was presented as a showcase for the European Parliament, only to disappear after the exposure by EU DisinfoLab.

EU Chronicle, like the defunct EP Today, has a section that hosts opinion pieces, including from MEPs. And the platform has been something of success despite the site’s total lack of visibility. More than a dozen op-eds have already been published, including one by Thierry Mariani, one by Fulvio Martusciello and two by Ryszard Czarnecki. The last two MEPs had already written articles for EP Today. DisinfoLab researchers are now convinced that EU Chronicle is simply the successor to EP Today. The Srivastava network, which was dismantled in 2019 after the first DisinfoLab report, has been brazenly rebuilt.

Julie Ward is a former British Labour MEP who published an opinion piece in her own name on EP Today. She explains to Les Jours that she was approached at the time by British lobbyist Madi Sharma, who was close to Henri Malosse, the former president of the European Economic and Social Committee. "I think she asked about the issues I was interested in – women's rights, children's rights, entrepreneurship – in order to approach me, and that she adapted her speech to each MEP," recalls the former MEP. Madi Sharma then suggested that she co-sign articles for EP Today, for example on women's rights in Saudi Arabia. And suggestions were made for parliamentary questions, at least one of which was subsequently asked.