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
US Vice President Kamala Harris was born in Nepal’s Gulmi district.
Fact
VP Harris was born in Oakland, US
A 20-second video claiming that US Vice President Kamala Harris was born in Nepal’s Gulmi district is going viral on TikTok.
TikTok user @mistermagarking posted a video showing United States Vice President Kamala Harris delivering a speech at a program. Text superimposed on the video reads, “People don’t believe when we say that US vice president Kamala Harris sister was originally from Gulmi district of Nepal. Listen from the horse’s mouth.” Another text below the video clip reads, “She is going to visit Nepal soon and will also visit her home district.” Audio accompanying the video attributed to the US vice president says, “I am from Nepal and I am speaking on behalf of the United Nations measure group of children and youth. We are the general assembly mandated youth engagement mechanism at the UN. Originally created in 1992 as an outcome of agenda 21. And these words come from a constituency of over 7000.”
The video posted on January 10 has garnered 18.4k likes, and 446 people have shared it.The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker conducted several keyword searches on Google by taking clues from the audio used in the viral video. The search led us to web page of United National Major Group for Youth and Children (UNMGYC). We found that the web page carried an image of one UNMGYC representative named Jolly Amatya and her speech whose wordings resembled the audio used in the viral video.
Taking a clue from the video, we conducted a search on YouTube and found a video, dated April 14, 2019, published on the YouTube channel named Jolly Amatya. On checking the six-minute long video, we found that the audio from 1-minute onwards exactly matched the viral video.
The video showed a speech from the UN General Assembly during its seventy-third session to mark one-hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the International Labour Organization (ILO) under the theme “The future of work” at the UN Headquarters in New York, on April 10 – 11, 2019.
Further, we searched the background of US Vice President Kamala Harris and found a brief biography article published on the White House administration. The article confirmed that Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California to parents who emigrated from India and Jamaica.
Thus, our findings clearly show that US Vice President Kamala Harris was born in the USA to immigrants from India and Jamaica.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming that US Vice President Kamala Harris was born in Nepal’s Gulmi district is misleading. The viral video is created by laying a false audio on top of a video from ABP Prime News.
Result: False
Sources
UNMGCY
Jolly Amatya/YouTube, April 18, 2019
The White House
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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.
