Fact Check: Oman Video Falsely Linked to Missing Persons in Balochistan

A video of a young girl is being circulated on social media with misleading claims aimed at discrediting the families of victims of enforced disappearances in Balochistan. The posts allege that while these families complain of financial hardships, they are seen using expensive iPhones.

The claim is false.

Claim

“Here is a poor daughter of Balochistan,” read an Urdu-language post on X (Twitter) circulating in Pakistan on March 25, “Her mother sells clothes to pay for her school fees. Despite carrying an iPhone worth Rs200,000 and earning well from YouTube and TikTok, she still claims to be poor.”

The video shows a young girl posing in a desert, with camels in the background.

Another user posted the same video and wrote: “The daughters, mothers, and sisters of missing persons sell clothes to pay for school fees, but never forget to carry an iPhone when making TikTok videos.” This post has been viewed over 198,000 times.

These claims began surfacing shortly after BBC Urdu aired a documentary on March 21, which followed four families of missing persons from Balochistan. In it, Dr Mahrang Baloch, an organiser of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), shared how her mother had to sell her clothes to pay for her first-year medical college fee, and later sold her jewellery for the second year.

Soon after, multiple social media accounts began sharing a misleading video clip to mock the families.

Fact

In reality, the video was filmed in Oman by a popular digital content creator from Balochistan.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFxyndQsN7x/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=14&wp=1102&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fapnegn.geo.tv&rp=%2Fgeonewimages%2Fcontent%2Fposts%2Fedit%2F599125%3Fpost_type%3D1#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A4201.5%2C%22ls%22%3A2745%2C%22le%22%3A3059.899999976158%7D

A reverse image search of the video’s keyframes traced it to a post made on February 7 by a content creator, Noorah Baloch, on Instagram. The video is captioned “Camel of Oman” and shows Noorah posing in front of camels.

Noorah Baloch has over two million followers on TikTok and one million on Instagram. On Instagram, she identifies as an “artist, content creator and Vlogger” who lives in Oman and Pakistan’s Balochistan. 

Verdict: The video clip of a young girl is being misrepresented to discredit the families of missing persons in Balochistan. In reality, the footage was filmed in Oman by a Baloch content creator.