Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Chair hurled at Rastriya Swatantra Party President during a parliament session
Fact
2015 image of parliamentary brawl edited to make the misleading claim
A viral video claiming that Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) President Rabi Lamichhane was attacked with a chair at the parliament is making the rounds on TikTok. The video further claims that Rabi cried and walked out of the parliament after “everyone” attacked him for allegedly failing to walk the talk. Newscheker found the claim to be misleading.
TikTok user @user1002038129202 posted a video showing a collage comprising of a scene from Nepal’s parliament, image of RSP President Rabi Lamichhane, Prime Minister and Chairman of CPN (Maoist Centre) Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, among others. Text superimposed on the video reads, Sad news Rabi was attacked with a chair in the parliament accusing him of talking tall and doing nothing. Rabi walked out of the parliament crying.” The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted May 31 has garnered 2884 likes, 16 users have shared it and 151 people have commented on it until the time of publishing this article.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made by the viral video, Newschecker analysed the video and split it into several keyframes and conducted reverse searches on them. One of the search results led us to several articles carrying an image by AFP News Agency showing chaotic scenes from Nepal’s parliament. On checking an article published on the Daily Mail online on 15 January, 2015, we found that an image carried in the article exactly matched a portion of the viral video. The article was about a brawl in the parliament during a session to discuss the new constitution that was in the making in 2015.
Our findings clearly showed that the fight in the parliament was from 2015 ahead of the promulgation of the new constitution. Taking it as a clue, we conducted a search on YouTube by using the keyword ‘fighting in Nepal’s parliament’ which threw up several relevant results. On checking a video posted on the YouTube channel of Associated Press, we found that the visuals matched the image used in the viral video. Maoist lawmakers, who were in the opposition bench ahead of the promulgation of the new constitution in 2015, had staged a violent resistance inside Nepal’s parliament by throwing chairs and microphones to protest the government move to push through a draft of a new constitution.
Further, we also looked up for recent incidents of any violent protest inside Nepal’s parliament. But we didn’t find any reports matching our search or the claim made by the viral video.
Conclusion
The viral post claiming that Rastriya Swatantra Party President Rabi Lamichhane was attacked inside the parliament was false as the accompanying video misleadingly uses an old image showing a brawl during a parliamentary session of the Constituent Assembly from 2015.
Result: False
Sources
Daily Mail, 20, 2015
Associated Press /YouTube, 20, 2015
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
