On August 19, 2022, Apil Gurung, a Twitter user with the handle @apligrg, posted a video on his account. He tweeted, “Whoever made this video should be awarded the Order of Gorkha Dakshin Bahu.” The Gorkha Dakshin Bahu used to be the second highest honour conferred by the king until 2008 when Nepal abolished monarchy.
The 26-second clip shows a handful of lawmakers from the Communist Party of Nepal, Unified Marxist and Leninist (CPN-UML) raise their hands and shout slogans during a House session chaired by Speaker Agni Sapkota. One can hear MPs shout slogans such as: “Vacate Narayanhiti, our king is on his way back,” “Long live monarchy,” and “Our king and our country are dearer than our life.” By August 24, the Tweet had garnered 115 Retweets and 694 likes. It was quote-tweeted 10 times. It also received several comments.
Apil Gurung also shared the post on his Facebook account. A Facebook page called Devu Parajuli Page, with over 8,000 followers, also shared Gurung’s post.
What is the truth behind the video clip? Nepal Check fact-checked the claim.
We used InVID, a browser extension tool, to analyse the video. InVID turned the video clip into keyframes. We conducted a reverse image search for the keyframes. However, the search didn’t yield any relevant results indicating that the original video wasn’t widely available.
Based on the images from the clip, we googled keywords related to the UML protest in Parliament after Sapkota was elected speaker on January 26, 2020.
We found a report in Everest Daily that said UML lawmakers had disrupted the meeting of the House of Representatives (HoR) on September 8, 2021. With 94 seats, the UML is the largest party in the 275-member House.
Nepal Check searched the HoR’s website for the video of the day’s meeting. The website maintains a video archive of parliamentary meetings. We found a 3.48-minute video that shows some UML lawmakers shout slogans and disrupt a meeting. They can be heard chanting slogans such as “Maintain Parliament’s dignity,” “Maintain rule of law,” and “Anti-constitution activities not allowed.”
This HoR video is the same as that of the video that Apil Gurung posted on his Twitter and Facebook accounts, given that both videos show the same people in the same sequence.
The HoR meeting was adjourned for the second time on September 8, 2021, after the UML lawmakers disrupted the meeting by chanting slogans against Speaker Sapkota, according to a report in The Kathmandu Post.
The UML lawmakers had called for the removal of 14 lawmakers, including former Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who had been expelled from their party for disobeying a whip to support the then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli during a no-confidence vote.
यो सत्यापन नेपालीमा पढ्नुस्
The protesting UML lawmakers had demanded that the speaker either issue a notice confirming the dismissal of the 14 lawmakers or read the notice in Parliament.
Our analysis showed that the video clip that Apil Gurung posted on his Twitter and Facebook accounts has the lawmakers’ original voices removed and replaced with pro-monarchy slogans.
Therefore, the doctored video clip shared on Twitter and Facebook showing UML lawmakers chanting pro-monarchy slogans in Parliament with the apparent aim of embarrassing the Unified Marxist and Leninist Party as Nepal heads to November parliamentary elections is misleading.
| Claim | Claimed by | Nepal Check Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Video shows UML lawmakers chanting pro-monarchy slogans in Nepal Parliament | Social media users | Misleading |
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