Flour thrown at French politician, not Dr Yunus
A video was spread on Facebook claiming that Awami League leaders and activists threw flour at Dr Muhammad Yunus as he got into a car from the airport in New York. However, Dismislab’s fact-check found the claim to be false. The video shows flour being thrown at French politician Raphaël Glucksmann.
On October 14, a video was posted from a Facebook page named “Rajnitir Math” (Political Arena). The post claimed, “As the usurer, moneylender, militant Dr. Yunus got into a car from the airport in New York, he was greeted with flour on behalf of the Awami League,” (verbatim).
The 8-second video shows something resembling a white powder being thrown at a man on a road at night. As of the publication of this report, the post had received more than 3,000 reactions, been shared more than 400 times, and been viewed more than 500,000 times.
The video was also found to have spread with the same claim from several Facebook profiles (1, 2, 3, 4) and pages (1, 2, 3).
To verify the claim, Dismislab conducted a reverse image search using keyframes of the video. This led to a video published on October 12 on a YouTube channel named CLPRESS. The title of the video reads, “Glucksmann Covered in Flour After Winning Left-Wing Primary for 2027 Presidential Election.”
The segment from the 13th to the 21st second matches the circulating video exactly. The video’s description reads, “Flour was thrown at Raphaël Glucksmann as he got into a taxi after leaving an event in Paris on October 11 celebrating his win in the left-wing primary.”
Glucksmann is a French politician and a member of the European Parliament. He won the social-democratic left’s primary to choose its candidate for the 2027 presidential election, receiving more than 66 percent of the vote.
A report by the France-based news outlet Euronews on October 12 also contains information about the same incident. The report stated that the incident occurred on the evening of Sunday, October 11, outside a bar called “La Cantine de Belleville” in Paris’s 20th arrondissement. He was celebrating his primary win there.
A report by the French news outlet LCP on October 12 also stated that flour was thrown at Glucksmann on Sunday night after his primary win. After the incident, the person left the location. The report further stated that multiple French media outlets aired video of the incident.
In other words, the claim that flour was thrown on Dr Muhammad Yunus is false. The video was filmed in Paris, France, on October 11.
