A screenshot of a news website is going viral on social media, claiming that the United Nations has criticized India for the rape incidents occurring in the country. The headline of the viral screenshot reads, ‘India is a slave to a sick mentality where rallies are held to save rapists – United Nations.’ (translation from Hindi to English). It also features a picture of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (here, here, and here). Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticized India, stating that the India is a slave to a sick mentality, where rallies are held to save rapists.
Fact: Neither the United Nations nor United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticized India for the rape incidents occurring in the country or referred to India as a ‘slave to a sick mentality’ regarding these incidents. In 2018, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern over the case of a rape and murder in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua describing it as ‘horrific’ and demanding that the accused be punished. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We conducted a relevant keyword search to determine whether United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres or the United Nations criticized India over the rape incidents in the country saying ‘India is a slave to a sick mentality.’ However, our search yielded no credible reports supporting this viral claim. If such comments had been made by the United Nations or Antonio Guterres, they would have garnered significant media attention. Additionally, we reviewed the official social media accounts of the United Nations and Antonio Guterres (here, here, and here) but found no posts supporting the viral claim.
To learn more about the viral screenshot, we conducted a Google reverse image search. This led us to a website called ‘THE JANMANCH,’ where we found the same news with the exact headline, published on 14 April 2018. The article reported a statement from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regarding the gang rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in the Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir, citing ‘The Indian Express’ as the source. However, we could not confirm the authenticity of this website.
Furthermore, we examined the news published in ‘The Indian Express’ on 14 April 2018, regarding UN Secretary-General Guterres’s comments on the Kathua rape incident. Nowhere in this report does ‘The Indian Express’ mention that UN Secretary-General Guterres described India as a country with a ‘sick mentality.’ According to this report, he referred to the gang rape and murder incident as ‘horrific’ and expressed hope that the accused would receive appropriate punishment for their crimes. Additional news reports on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s comments about the Kathua rape incident can be found here, here, and here. These reports also state that Antonio Guterres referred to the gang rape and murder incident as ‘horrific’ and expressed hope that the accused would receive appropriate punishment for their crimes.
To sum it up, the United Nations did not describe India as a ‘slave to a sick mentality’ in relation to rape incidents.