Multiple videos are being circulated on social media claiming them as the videos of Muslims protests in Chechnya against France and their President Emmanuel Macron. Earlier this month, a teacher in Paris was beheaded for showing the cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammed in a classroom. Early this month, President Emmanuel Macron took a stance against radical Islam and made a statement that they are not going to give up their cartoons. Following these comments by Emmanuel Macron, massive protests took place in Muslim-majority countries. Let’s verify the claims made in these posts.
Claim: Videos of Muslims protesting against France and their President Emmanuel Macron.
Fact: Videos shared in these posts are old. These videos have nothing to do with the recent protests by Muslims against the French Government. Hence the claims made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of screenshots in this video, similar visuals found in a YouTube video posted by ‘VOA’ news channel on ‘10 November 2019’. A similar flag with the same logo can be seen in this video. The description of the video mentions it as the celebrations of Prophet Muhammed’s birthday in Yemen capital Sanaa. It is mentioned that tens of thousands of Yemenis and Houthi Muslims gathered at Sanaa on ‘09 November 2019’ to celebrate Prophet Muhammed’s birthday.
‘AFPTV’ shared a video with similar visuals in ‘Getty Images’ website. ‘UPRISING TODAY’ news website published an article about this event. It is mentioned in the article that Millions of Yemenis gathered at the 70th square in Capital Sanaa to celebrate and commemorate the birthday of Prophet Muhammad. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that this video is not related to the recent protests of Muslims against the French Government.
On reverse image search of screenshots in the video, similar visuals were found in a video posted by the ‘Ukraine Today’ news channel on ‘19 January 2015’. In the description of the video, it is mentioned that Hundreds of thousands of people staged a massive protest against the cartoons on Prophet Muhammad. This massive protest took place at Chechnya’s Capital Grozny on ‘19 January 2015’.
Sharing similar visuals, ‘Russia Today’ news channel also posted a video on YouTube. In the article published by ‘France24’ news website, it is mentioned that tens of thousands participated in a massive protest against the publication of cartoons on Muslim Prophet Muhammad by French weekly newspaper ‘Charlie Hebdo’. So, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post is related to an old protest in Chechnya.
To sum it up, old videos are now falsely shared as the Muslims protest against the French Government in Chechnya.
