These photos show an Afghan woman who topped a national university entrance exam in 2020
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on December 9, 2020 at 14:50
- Updated on December 10, 2020 at 14:45
- 3 min read
- By AFP Pakistan
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The photos were published in this Facebook post on December 6, 2020. The post has been shared more than 230 times.
The Urdu-language text underneath the photos translates to English as: “This is Shamsa who secured first position among two hundreds thousand students in CSS (Central Superior Services) exam. On this happy occasion when asked why she was crying, she replied: ‘My father is a labourer in a coal mine, he is not aware of my success.’”
The post’s caption reads: “Shamsa from Hazara community in Balochistan secured the first position in Central Superior Services (CSS) examination 2020…”
Balochistan is one of four provinces of Pakistan which border Iran and Afghanistan.
CSS exams are conducted by Pakistan’s Federal Public Service Commission for recruitment into civil service.
The same photos have been shared more than 140 times after they appeared alongside a similar claim here, here and here on Facebook; and here, here and here on Twitter.
But the claim is false.
A reverse image search on Google found identical photos of the same woman in various media reports. The reports describe her as Afghan national Shamsia Alizada, who topped the country’s national university entrance exam in 2020.
On September 24, 2020, the Afghan embassy in Washington, D.C., tweeted a link to a report from Afghanistan’s Tolo news outlet, which carries a video interview with the same woman.
Shamsia, a young woman from Kabul who survived the 2018 Mawoud Academy bombings, was the top scorer in this year's National University Entrance Exam. She will continue her studies at Kabul Medical University. #SheCan #GoodNewsAFG https://t.co/eqWAQBtaUM
— Afghan Embassy DC (@Embassy_of_AFG) September 24, 2020
The tweet reads: “Shamsia, a young woman from Kabul who survived the 2018 Mawoud Academy bombings, was the top scorer in this year’s National University Entrance Exam. She will continue her studies at Kabul Medical University. #SheCan #GoodNewsAFG”.
The story of Alizada, the daughter of an Afghan coal miner, was also published by The New York Times, Reuters, NPR, India TV channel News18 and Persian news portal Mashrooteh.com.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the first photo in the misleading post (L) and the first photo in the Persian news portal report (R):
Below is a screenshot comparison of the second photo in the misleading post (L) and the second photo in the Persian news portal report (R), with some corresponding features marked by AFP:
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