Model’s Photo Shared Online as ‘Indigenous Youth Caught Posing as Chinese’
A post on Facebook spreads two photos of a man, with the claim that an indigenous youth got caught in Kishoreganj after posing as Chinese, falling in love, and then arriving for marriage. Dismislab’s fact-check finds that the photo spread online comes from a model’s shoot uploaded four years ago on “Pexels,” a stock photo platform.
On 24 November, a Facebook page posts two photos of a man. The caption reads, “In Kishoreganj, someone tried to marry after 3 months of love using a Chinese identity and got caught. During questioning, it came out that he is indigenous 😅. He used the Chinese name Wu Ming Ping, but the real name is Ramel 👉.” Until the publication of this report, the post crossed 800 shares and received more than 80 thousand reactions. Around 2 thousand comments also appear on the post.
Users posted many ethnic hate-filled and stereotypical comments (insulting a group of people based on widely repeated oversimplified ideas about their race, religion, gender, etc.).
Several personal profiles, pages, and groups (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) shared the same photo with identical claims. The photo shows a young man in a grey T-shirt. The background appears fully green. Text inside the photo reads, “Tried to marry in Kishoreganj using a Chinese identity; after being caught, says I am indigenous 😅.’’
A reverse image search using keyframes leads Dismislab to a photo uploaded in 2021 on “Pexels”, a free platform for photos and videos. Pexels offers high-quality stock photos and videos for free use. The spread photo matches the original Pexels photo exactly.
Searching further on Pexels reveals an ID named “Shotpot”. The account contains several photos from a shoot uploaded on 29 April 2021. Those photos show the same man in multiple solo and family shots, indicating that he works as a model. He also took part in a photoshoot holding a board with the text “#stopasianhate.” Clicking “more info” on Pexels shows that the photo was taken on 31 March 2021.
A website and a YouTube Shorts video also use the same image from different angles while explaining facial features. So, the photo circulated with the claim of an indigenous youth actually shows a model. No link to Bangladesh appears here.
Dismislab finds no news report about any “indigenous youth” caught in Kishoreganj while pretending to be Chinese in order to marry. A report aired on Bangla TV mentions a woman from Kishoreganj who married a Chinese man after meeting online. After about a year, she posted a video claiming severe abuse by her husband in China. The photo shown in that video has no similarity with the photo spread online with the indigenous youth’s claim.
