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
A news report informing that US soldiers are all set to arrive in Nepal in droves with the implementation of MCC and that CPN-UML Chairman Oli has suffered an accident
Fact
The images used in the viral video shows a delegation of US Congress meeting President Poudel on September 1. The image allegedly showing KP Oli’s vehicle stuck in a manhole was not his car, and has been on the internet at least since December 2018.
A viral video claiming that the United States has taken a huge step and that US soldiers are all set to flock to Nepal less than two days after the formal implementation of the multimillion-dollar Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact projects has gone viral on TikTok. The video further claims that the Chairman of Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) Chairman KP Sharma Oli has suffered an accident.
Six years after Nepal signed an agreement with MCC, the much-debated MCC Nepal Compact officially entered into the implementation phase on August 30. The five-year program jointly funded by Nepal Government and the US government will build an electricity transmission line and upgrade roads in the country.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @newsnepal_439 posted a video, in the style of a news bulletin, showing an image of a foreign delegation meeting a high level Nepali official followed by an image of a car stuck in a manhole on the road. The audio, presented in a news bulletin style says, “The United States of America has taken a huge step less than two days after the formal implementation of the multimillion-dollar Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact projects and the US soldiers are all set to flock to Nepal.” It further goes on to say, “Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ has virtually inaugurated the three-month transformation campaign… A bad incident has happened to UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli.”
Text superimposed on the video reads, “A flood of US soldiers in Nepal with the implementation of the MCC in Nepal. The arrival of American soldiers has surged with the accident of CPN-UML Chairman Oli.”
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted on September 2 has garnered 657 likes, 46 shares and 32 people have commented on it.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker took several keyframes from the video and conducted reverse searches on them.
The reverse search on the keyframe from the first image used in the viral video led us to several news articles carrying images, whose frames exactly matched the viral video.
On checking a news article dated September 1, 2023, published on My Republica online, we found that the image showed a US Congress delegation meeting President Ram Chandra Poudel at his office in Sheetal Niwas, Kathmandu.
According to the news article, the five-member US Congress delegation discussed a range of issues, including democracy, human rights, immigration, children, child marriage, employment, and people’s access to justice. However, the delegation didn’t touch upon the issue of MCC.
We also checked the news article published on Radio Nepal, the state-owned radio which also carried the same image used in the viral video.
A further search on the image of the SUV seen in the viral video led us to a Facebook post, dated December 17, 2018, published on the page Rastriyakhabar.com. On reading the caption, we found that the image showed an SUV that plunged into a manhole at Gongabu, Kathmandu. The image carried a watermark of Setopati online and was also credited to the same.
Taking a clue, we conducted a keyword search on Google and found a report dated 17 December, 2018, published on Setopati, about the negligence of the Department of Roads, due to which an SUV plunged into a manhole in the Gongabu stretch of the Ring Road.
We found that the image actually showed a random car that got stuck into a manhole due to the negligence of the Department of Roads.
Thus, our findings clearly show that the claim about the alleged “big step by the US ” and that the image purportedly showing the car of UML Chair Oli is false.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming that US soldiers are all set to flock Nepal and that the CPN-UML Chairman Oli had an accident, are both misleading.
Result: False
Sources
My Repubilca, September 1, 2023
Radio Nepal Online, September 1, 2023
Setopati.com, December 17, 2018
Rastriyakhabar.com/Facebook, December 17, 2018
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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.
