Beaconhouse rebukes ‘engineered hate campaign’ on social media

School chain lodges second complaint to FIA Cybercrime Circle to identify, take action against ‘miscreants’

The Beaconhouse School System has lodged a second complaint to the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cybercrime Circle to identify and take action against those behind an ‘engineered hate campaign’ against the school chain on social media.

The campaign was initially launched by a former employee of The Educators – a parallel school system being run by Beaconhouse -- who was terminated for physically assaulting his line manager, said a statement issued by the school chain.

An FIR was lodged against the individual on December 26, 2017 as well as a defamation suit in the Multan district court on April 4, 2018 after registering the first criminal complaint in the FIA Cybercrime Circle in February earlier this year.

According to Beaconhouse, the social media trial, labeling the school system ‘an enemy of the state’, is fully engineered and sponsored as the mentioned individual does not alone have the capacity to run a campaign of this magnitude. “He has become a willing pawn in the hands of certain media individuals whose motives are still unclear,” the statement further read.



“The core issue in this campaign pertains to the highly regrettable but inadvertent misrepresentation of the Pakistan map in the textbooks of The Educators. The Educators has in the past acknowledged this human error and apologised to its parent body,” read the statement.

The school system said that attempts have been underway to rectify the error since 2015 when this was first brought to light. “This process has however taken longer than expected because there are 267 images of the Pakistan map in 21 textbooks/workbooks/teachers guides for Social Studies, History and Geography from Classes 1 to 8 featuring political borders, population density, rainfall, topography, and Pre-Partition maps. Many of these maps have since been corrected, but unfortunately not all mistakes were identified on time, resulting in further misprints in 2016,” it added.

The school system further added that all textbooks of The Educators have once again been proofread and the proposed drafts submitted to the Punjab Curriculum & Textbook Board (PCTB) in May 2018 for their official approval, which is now awaited.



Why would The Educators have correctly represented political boundaries in the majority of the maps if it truly wanted to promote an anti-Pakistan agenda, the statement further read, adding “Since the real target of this hate campaign is Beaconhouse, why has Beaconhouse not made the same blunder in its own textbooks?”

The school chain urged its students, their parents and teachers among other members of the Beaconhouse community to stand tall with the organisation. “As Pakistan's largest school network, we don't doubt that we will continue to be targeted by hate-mongers in the future, since this kind of intimidation and blackmail have become endemic to social media, but are certain that the core Beaconhouse community will never doubt our commitment and unparalleled service to our beloved country spanning nearly half a century.”