Teyshi (00:19)
Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of Kashmir Exists on the podcast. I have the lovely Maria with me and we are going to be talking about one of our favourite topics. You'll never guess. okay, I'll tell you. We're going to be talking about, Maria, we're going to be talking about infiltrators. Now, what do I mean infiltrators? Well...

Maria (00:32)
Thank you.

Teyshi (00:42)
One of the reasons we do this podcast is because we want to make Kashmir visible and the fact that it's occupied illegally by India. And so therefore it's a movement. And in a lot of activist movements, such as the Free Palestine Movement as well, and other movements to support suppressed people, what sometimes happens, which we might not expect, is that there can be infiltrators to a movement. So I'm going to discuss that a little bit more, but hello Maria.

Maria (01:11)
Hi Teyshi

Thank you for inviting me to this exciting podcast and a very important topic. Infiltrators are these kind of people that become gradually and obstructively to use the support pieces of our movement. And that is very important and aware to make our audience aware because I know that a lot of them are have a advocacy project. So this is very educational.

Teyshi (01:18)
Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely, and it might not be something that we all think about, Did you really think about this much before we started talking around October 2023? Did you really give this much thought? I know I didn't.

Maria (01:55)
No, I didn't because when I started my advocacy and work, I was so excited to meet people with the same passion. I never thought the people could use the passion that we have against us, right? Because we sometimes we get so excited. So we are blinded. think that everybody comes with a good intention, but that is not the case.

Teyshi (02:10)
Exactly.

Sadly it's not the case. So you gave us a little bit of an explanation about infiltrator. Do you want to talk me through what is your perception of an infiltrator in terms of your experience? What have you really seen?

Maria (02:34)
Well, Infiltrator is that person that joined a movement on advocacy projects, pretending to have the same goal, Help, collect, make change. But later, they start showing the true objective. Like, for example, some of them came because they, you know that we handle a large amount of money.

And so they come with the intention to take that financial opportunity away from us and take it for themselves. Like in other words, stealing. So I found out those kind of people. Other people they become like for them is know about the objective is about them. Like look at me, what I'm doing. Look at me, what I'm working on. Like an ego booster. And other people then, yeah, right.

Teyshi (03:25)
They center themselves, don't they? They center themselves and try to get bit of kudos and a bit of leverage and to maybe make themselves relevant.

Maria (03:26)
I love it.

Yeah.

Exactly and the third time they're encountered is just people they like to create conflicts in an organized environment. They they insert themselves just to provoke divisions and you know the divide and conquer right? When you divide people our projects fall apart after that so those are very dangerous as well.

Teyshi (03:56)
Yeah, so we talked about, and thank you for that, we talked about what could be the types of infiltrators. So we've looked at there's people that we could broadly consider as scammers. There's people that are really egoic and are trying to center themselves in a movement for whether it's attention or validation. You know, I've certainly seen people doing that. I've seen people buying their way into what's considered the cliques of, you know, of movement just so they can feel important.

There's also people that pretend to be, I've seen people pretending to be Kashmiri that later turn out not to be. We've definitely seen people pretending to be Palestinian, right? So there's also people that are purely catfishing. What do you think about that?

Maria (04:42)
have seen it and she is sadly I have my experience with people there they keep the wrong information to get part of the help that we get and it's very sad right because like we believe them that's the point like people they are in this for the true heart we don't want to be judgmental so we believe them and

Teyshi (05:06)
Mm-hmm.

Maria (05:06)
And

it hurt because like, for example, we raised a thousand dollars and we give them to this person. So we take a thousand dollars for someone that actually needed and needs a lot. we, a thousand dollar we fight, we, can feed like 10 people. And now those 10 people that could have been helped, they won't because they are, we believe their own person. So that is very dangerous. Yes. And it's caused a lot of problems.

Teyshi (05:31)
Yeah.

Well, I think it's also, yeah, and you're right, you know, there's definitely the financial incentive in more than one ways that we've discussed. There's people that just enjoy infiltrating movements and feeling important. There's people that actually pretend, some people in order to feel important, they pretend to be something that they're not to gain leverage. But you're right, that is dangerous because

You know, that person could be spreading misinformation by virtue of saying things that aren't right because they're not really in a position to talk about it, although they might let other people think they are. You know, so there's things like that that go on as well. There are people that you're right, there are people that infiltrate and you can tell they could obviously be paid agents, they could be whoever they are. And they're...

their goal is really to come into these spaces and to create chaos, to sow that division, to sow a bit of uncertainty, to try and change people's minds, to spread misinformation, lots of things like that actually. So that there are people that are paid to do that. But like we were saying before, it's not something we would have really thought of.

Maria (06:27)
you

Teyshi (06:46)
I think you have to be in the spaces to kind of see it firsthand and then you understand what it actually is and what harm it does. So talked a little bit there about the types of infiltration. I'm sure there's many more types than we've covered. But how did you spot the signs? I mean, I've got my own ideas, Maria, but if you had to give someone advice that was coming into a space for the first time, which is about activism and advocacy.

What kind of advice or kind of red flags spot the signs? What advice would you give people?

Maria (07:19)
The signs, like for example for the people they are infiltrating with the objective to steal money. We said that the first signs is that these individuals are focused on the monetary aspect. They care how much money are we making, who is making the money, and they were normally volunteered to be the receiver of this. So.

Teyshi (07:35)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Maria (07:43)
and my advice for that to everybody that is organizing an advocacy, make sure that the funds are preferable. If you can, send directly to the person or the objective that you want to help. Avoid a third party. Like in my cases, I'm helping a Palestinian family. So I try the best

or as much as they can that they get the money directly avoiding third parties to try to eliminate that part or the rest.

Teyshi (08:13)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Absolutely and these financial sort of scams we know that another sign is lack of transparency it's something that we've talked about a lot as well. So what does that really look like a lack of transparency how would you describe that and what advice would you give?

Maria (08:35)
Always have you received clear and organized. That's my best advice. Is because sometimes we don't like we are raising it like $20,000. But let's say that we only were able to get 10,000 and the family or the organization or the need for this is immediately. You have to keep that money right away. Make sure that that is not the right and also

listed all the items that you spend the money on. Clarity always as much as you can every penny needs to be accounted for and needs to be shown. There are people that say it's charity, is it charity if you delete the money you just have to just leave it because it's charity. No the money that you give you have the right to know where is the money so you have the right to ask for receive.

Teyshi (09:11)
Yeah.

and we'll back in

Maria (09:28)
If you give me money, if you give me $50, it's my responsibility to tell you with those $50 I bought, with $10 I bought socks, with the other $10 I bought bread, with the other $30 I bought medicines. And I have to show you those receipts. Just because you give me the money for charity doesn't mean that I can do that whatever I want. If you donate it, I have the responsibility to show you what did I do with the money that you donate.

Teyshi (09:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Maria (09:58)
So another is charity, but it comes with responsibility as well. It's come with your rights.

Teyshi (10:03)
And

do you think that if when asking for transparency, the individual that's engaged to that charity gets defensive or difficult or angry or refuses straight out to give transparency, how would you view that?

Maria (10:26)
Well, that's a major red flag, right? That's is, is I give you, I give you a hundred dollars and I need to know, Hey, what happened with the $100 and you are giving me excuses or avoiding me or ghosting me. I can, I, it's my right to feel that you are scumming that that money was not used for the purpose that you told me, right? Because if you wouldn't do what you say, it would have no problem. Like you wouldn't have problem to show it, right? And

Teyshi (10:45)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there's, yeah, transparency

is, yeah, go on.

Maria (10:59)
And it's a lot of cases that happen. Like for example, one of the phone races that I organized, we were raising money for this family to get their home back. And we raised like $25,000. Thank God for a miracle, this family didn't need the money anymore. So I had $25,000. So it was my responsibility to tell my donors, listen,

This money is not needed for this. Thank God it was resolved without our intervention. So I give them the options. Either you can take your money back or we can redirect it or reduce it to this cost. And I needed approval. You know what I mean? So I needed to tell me, you want it back because you donate for this house. We don't need it anymore. They can tell me, no, please send me the money back. Or they can say, no, use it for the next person.

Teyshi (11:42)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Maria (11:53)
It's my

responsibility to tell them that I don't need their money for that cause anymore. And it's their right to tell me either return it or not. But I cannot do whatever I want. See, I cannot just say, I'll have the money. Let me use it for something else. And don't say anything. So that is a bad practice. That is malpractice.

Teyshi (12:07)
Yep.

things.

Yeah, definitely. Those were some of the very clear signs of, you know, hiding, concealing information, not being clear, using a reason to raise money, but then using the money raised for something else without informing people, without getting consent. But, you know, that's a lot we've talked about the financial side of things. We did talk about people that generally censor themselves and there are people that pretend in an order to do that, some people might pretend to be a certain

For example, I don't know, from a certain community. So for example, if we were talking about, you know, the Free Palestine Movement, we have had individuals pretending to be Palestinian. In terms of, you know, the Kashmiri sort of awareness piece, we've had individuals pretending to be Kashmiri as well. In fact, there's one individual pretending to be Kashmiri and Palestinian. So that was quite interesting.

But like, what would, I mean, what is the red flags you've seen? Cause I can tell you the red flags that I see when I'm not too sure about somebody. But is there any red flags that you've been able to spot when people are kind of just using the movement to center themselves and B, pretending to be something that they're not to get closer and in other words, to get so that people treat them as if they're more important because you know, they're closer to the movement.

Maria (13:32)
Yeah, I'm gonna answer the second one first. I think I didn't have that many encounters with these people that think that, let's see, because I'm this ethnicity or because I am who I am, therefore my voice or my work is more important.

thank God I haven't encountered that much but I have seen it I have seen people that say because this is my necessity therefore I should be on front or I should even though they don't have an idea what they're doing because they have this identity they think they should be should be doing the front face right and and for us like for example I don't I always work in the back right but our front face needs to be someone able to defend

Teyshi (14:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Maria (14:21)
explained and relate our objective the best and sometimes that person is not the same in necessity or what we do it or have no relationship so I have to put that person in front. Sometimes there is sometimes there are so and when the ego comes the fight is like about why not it's my voice it's not your voice or this person is this this person is that that has so much friction

Teyshi (14:27)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Maria (14:44)
and delay so many projects that you don't have idea. So it is, it is illustrated.

Teyshi (14:45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, absolutely.

No, there is, there definitely feels like there are cliques, cliques, that there are hierarchies within those hierarchies, you know, of all cliques, which clique is, know, and it goes on like this. But I think one of the things that, you and you pointed out some really good examples, there are things that definitely go on. Some of the stuff that I've noticed is that people will fetishise certain movements and people that are oppressed.

So, you know, sometimes everything doesn't really add up. What I've tend to have seen is that the people that do that really labour the point a lot. So I've heard people saying things like, my people, you know, constantly over and over again, in a way that, know, wherever you're, you know, you're from one place, I'm from another. We don't speak like that.

You know, I never really talk about Kashmir people as my people, my country. I don't do that. I always find that there's an element of overemphasis. And I think that that is that person trying to convince everybody and maybe themselves. And maybe it's that it's their, you know, insecurity coming out because they know they're really not from there. And so they almost overcompensating. I have seen a lady.

Maria (15:53)
It's.

Teyshi (16:13)
constantly talking about her family in Gaza at every opportunity. Now, I want to be careful when I say this because I don't mean that if you say you've got family in Gaza, that is a red flag. I'm talking about a particular individual that at any given moment would constantly say, but I'm the one with family in Gaza. And it was done in a sort of over gratuitous way in the same way that somebody would say,

you know, my people, my land and all this kind of stuff over and over again, like a mantra, right? It became a mantra almost to the point where it got nonsensical and it didn't fit in with the conversation. It just seemed to be shoved down everyone's throat to the point where it was like, wow, are you OK? I personally found that as a as a good telltale sign, but I will tell the listeners one of the things that I found useful, especially when people and people do do this, by the way, say they're from Kashmir Valley.

I always try and speak Kashmir to them, so that's first thing I do. The other thing that I might do is ask them where they're from particularly. These are very obvious red flags to me. I don't expect everyone that's in a diaspora to speak their language. I understand that not everyone can, you know, but I expect them to know basics. I expect them to...

because of their parents were speaking to understand it. you know, even that isn't a deal breaker, but it's just a little bit of a smoking gun. We have to wait for more evidence. Then if I say to them, you know, where in the valley are you from? And they really don't know, that doesn't look good because most people that are Kashmiri in the diaspora are so proud of being from there and are so mindful of what's going on and how important it is that they're very, very proud of who they are, you know.

so, you know, it's very, I would say that that coupled with the language issue, if you don't, if you cannot in any way speak or understand Kashmiri in any way, and you don't know where your family, which part of, you know, the Kashmiri value family from it's not looking good. And then I just sort of keep a mental note that this person might not be who they say they are. That's just my own advice.

Have you got any others that you can think of, things that you've seen that when you're facing a situation you think to yourself, is this person's motivation? This doesn't sound right.

Maria (18:36)
We have experience in online advocacy because online is a little hard because we hear voices, but we can always see the person, And me, because sometimes I can be very naive. I believe that this person was in Palestine. They have family there. They even show me pictures. And their English was very good. Way better than mine, actually.

And I got a relationship, like I really have relationship with this person and I believe that they have a niece that was Palestinian and I believe that they need this family to have like 10 members and I was about to start something for them and when somebody that was actually Palestinian come and try to speak Arabic to this person

couldn't speak it. I tried to speak it and it sounds so funny. And I was like, and my friend said like, this person doesn't speak Arabic. No, I she's Palestinian. I heard her speak in Arabic. So when I showed the video of her speaking Arabic, my friend is laughing like there's no Arabic.

Teyshi (19:25)
wow.

Yeah.

Maria (19:47)
I don't anything. yes, if that, I think that's the only experience. After that, we become wiser and I have a team that are very careful because we want to respect the dignity, right? I don't want to ask for too much, but I do need some information. So after that experience, we build a process to verify

Teyshi (19:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maria (20:13)
the best ways as possible so I have people that actually Palestinian they actually speak the dialect they know the city they know what city is in the north what city is in the south because that's another thing similar what you're saying like and and this city that is in the south and my friend like that city is not even in Gaza it's in the west bank

Teyshi (20:35)
Well, exactly. They're only...

Yeah, exactly. These are going to be the telltale signs. We have to appreciate people in the diaspora might not be able to speak a certain language. It's very rare for a Palestinian in the diaspora not to speak the language. However, there might be the odd thing. But when you get other things with it, like you've said, they get basic things wrong, like where the town is and, you know, another Palestinian or a person from that area will find that suspicious. It's not looking good at that point.

Maria (21:03)
Yeah, yeah, so we had to be very careful because yeah, it costs harm. It's a waste of time, time that most of us don't have. So it costs harm to what we do in. For sure.

Teyshi (21:15)
Yeah, but

I think another one as well for me that's been a personal one for me is something I talk about a lot. So I will, for example, see people from the surrounding areas of Kashmir in South Asia really, you know, claiming to care so much about the Palestinian struggle as a human being and as a Muslim perhaps. But then when you tell them, do you know what's happening in Kashmir, which is literally

you know, about 500 kilometers or less from them. They either have no awareness or more more actually that's a problem. They have absolute disinterest as in this doesn't interest me. And that is a huge red flag for me. And I view those types of people as infiltrators because what we're looking at is people that jump on a bandwagon for the sake of it because this, you know, genocide of Palestine is trending. But when you

face them with similar atrocities in other parts of the world. And especially if they're from South Asia and it's Kashmir and it's so close and therefore it should resonate with them more because clearly they're such a caring humanitarian, right? And they just a bit like, well, you know, not really interested. It's not the trendy subject right now. That will be a red flag for me. think selective allyship is always a red flag.

I think performative allyship is a red flag. These are all red flag behaviors for infiltrators, people who are insincere in their allyship. The reasons that they're there for are not correct. They have ulterior motives. So I think for me, that's another one as well.

But yeah, that's some of the red flags that we've talked about. So what we have talked about, Maria, is we've talked about a broad definition of what infiltrators could be, if we had to describe it, the types of infiltration, some of the red flags as well. And although this is a kind of new territory that we find ourselves in, kind of, some people might say, what harm are they really doing? Well, they aren't doing harm, aren't they, Maria?

Maria (23:24)
Yeah, definitely harmed because like I said, it takes a lot, especially how the economy is right now, it takes a lot of time to raise money and a lot of efforts because people, even people that wants to donate, they cannot donate as much. So every penny that we raise is important. So have those compromised by someone that's here to scam is a problem. Have the time that we use

for someone they just want to be here for a trending movement and not actually doing the work all cause and delay. There is a problem because you know especially in Gaza because we didn't need that money to eat and also people that are here just to cause the vision and cause the is definitely a problem because what we have been done in two weeks now we had to do it in four because there was friction there was problems and the objective gets affected and also it takes

Teyshi (23:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Maria (24:19)
Some people they came like to help they get discouraged when they see those kind of things. You see they feel bad. They feel heartbroken. They say, I trust this person and I was betrayed and that is current and they trust is is is is tented. So and we lose. We lose a lot of valuable people because these kind of infiltrated harm them by lying or.

Teyshi (24:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Maria (24:46)
in destroying our well-organized projects. So it definitely is a big problem.

Teyshi (24:51)
Yeah,

I totally agree with you on that one. I think it fosters mistrust. People, you you need trust in a movement. It's built on trust. know, it's built on having a community, but a community under those pressures absolutely relies on the framework of trust. know, it's the building blocks of it, really.

And so when you do something like that, you're breaking trust and then people just, you know, support for the movement might wane then, right? Which is ultimately damaging for the end goal as well. think, you know, talking about infiltration in general, the harm that it can do, as you said, is that it can actually interrupt delay.

But in the case of there are people from the opposition, let's say, you know, pro-India or pro-Israel, if we just use those two as an example, we've often seen those, you know, types of people infiltrating, whether they're paid or not, this could just be something that they have a personal, you know, ambition about.

because they might have strong feelings in real life, whether they happen to be Indian, whether they happen to be, I don't know, pro-Zionist really, and pro-Zionist don't have to necessarily be from Israel and they don't necessarily have to be Jewish. So some people just have that natural kind of strong feeling about it. Of course, there are people that are paid to do that. There are people that are paid to dox or dox freely.

to gather information so they can report back. And it causes harm to people in real life because there have been people that have not just been threatened online, doxed. It's happened in person. Their families have been threatened. The police have been called. It can have so many far-reaching implications as well. And we've seen that, haven't we?

Maria (26:55)
Yes and I love that you brought that up because that is a very important subject to the people listening to us. Please be very careful with the kind of information that you give because that is a red flag. And advocacy we don't need much, we don't need to know a whole lot about you in order for you to be a volunteer. So make sure to be very careful what you provide.

your name, your last name should be enough, a phone number should be enough to contact you, an email address to send you information. We don't ask for much. We don't need to know your social security. We don't need to know where you live. We don't need to know your family number, where you come from, your ethnicity. We don't need that much. We only need the bare basis to know your name so we can address you.

to know our email address or phone number so we contact you. But be very careful with the kind of information that you give because like Teshie said, one infiltration that is very dangerous is the opposition infiltration. They use this movement to feedback to people that come harm you or report your work or stuff like that. So for anything, don't keep them as information. We don't need it.

Just be very cautious. If you're gonna give information, make sure that the person that is handling someone that you trust and is very clear and if they need it, just you have the right to ask why, why do you need it? And they have the responsibility to give you a good reason. If that reason is not convincing to you, you can decline. So be very careful with everything that you provide by yourself so you can protect yourself and your family.

Teyshi (28:45)
Absolutely, absolutely. These are all really important, you know, online safety points that, you know, we're talking about people who harm the movement, whether it's scamming people, whether it's infiltrating to docks, threaten to take away from the movement to sow mistress, division. There's all sorts of ways that infiltrators cause harm, whether it's for themselves, whether they're working on behalf of others.

You know, one of the things I always find really interesting is that there are people who will want to be there in the movement. But when it comes to the actual work, apart from just the niceties, they're not really present in the work. I think that that's a really obvious one. But another one that I did find, and I think this is quite important because it's happened a few times, there will always be opportunists in every movement. And when we talk about opportunists, we really mean any

any kind of opportunity. There might be people looking for any type of opportunity and what you'll find then is that people will enter a very low level. This could be online, this could be in person and they seem quite innocuous. They stay in the background for a while and you don't really think anything of it because you know especially when we're talking about online platforms there are people that are more visible, there are people that are know are just sort of here and there and then there are the people just sort of lurk in the comments for a while.

And what I found, especially on online platforms, is that sometimes when you see people that had stayed in the comments for the longest time, and you could be really talking about a month, you could be talking about three months, but then they suddenly develop a more presence. So they stop being the comment person, the reply guy, and they start having an active profile. They start going online and they start becoming more of a presence all of a sudden.

I found that to be a repetitive sign. And my theory on that, by the way, is that there are people that come in, they stay under the radar, they're watching, learning and listening, they're understanding, you know, the landscape. And then when they feel confident or they have all the information they need, the opportunity is then right for them to rise from the shadows and...

and for them to then start centering themselves and insinuating themselves with some of the leading kind of figures in the movement to gain trust, to then carry out, whether it's a scam, whether it's just for them to have the limelight. Sometimes you'll also find that they tend to gift quite a lot as well. So this could be in the form of charity. This could be in the form of certain platforms like TikTok, you can send gifts.

That's another thing that tends to happen as well some people There's it's transactional and and that whole transactional thing by the way is another red flag Sometimes people gift a lot because they they actually do expect something in return whether that's harmless Whether they're doing that out of the good of the heart, but for the ones that are doing it because they want an in into those spaces and that's That's the infiltration. But yeah, that was

That was just my little extra bit on the end there because I think we, for me, it's really important that when we think about infiltrators, we really think about it in a 360 way. It's a lot more than what we realize. And I bet you, Maria, there'll be more to come that we hadn't thought of. Because this is only what we've come across, right?

Maria (32:14)
Yeah, and this was a very improvised podcast because we were talking about each other and they were saying that we need to let our viewers know what we go through, the people that we encounter. So hopefully this is like a warning tale for them and they are careful and protect themselves and the group and whatever they're working on.

Teyshi (32:35)
Absolutely and thank you so much for being part of the podcast today. You know, I think we've really covered a lot of it. I'm sure there'll be more to add in the future because these kind of fraudulent or, you know, insincere activities evolve over time. But this is really meant to be a tool for people to help people to spot the signs. If you do want any more information, you can of course email us. Please

you know, visit our website, kushmerexists.org and we have some contact details there. We have a lot of articles there as well, but you can certainly contact us if you feel that you need more information on it or you need advice. Anyone in kushmerexists would be happy to help. But did you have anything in closing Maria?

Maria (33:19)
Yes, encourage everybody to contact us with anything, maybe their own experience, maybe to let us know if they have no personal organization, they went behind to a cause and create problems. That would be amazing to read about it. And yeah, if you need anything else, feel free to contact us. We'll be happy to help. Thank you, Tessy. This was great.

Teyshi (33:27)
Mm-hmm.

Thank so much and yeah, I second Maria's words and hope to catch up with you again soon Maria. Thank you everybody and we'll see you next time.