A purported tweet of Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury is doing the rounds on social media. It shows Yechury referring to Communist-ruled China’s president Xi Jinping as his “boss”. The alleged tweet dates back to October 20, 2015.
Several others on Facebook have shared the alleged tweet.
Fact-check
The tweet is fake and the first clue which makes this evident is the date of the tweet, October 20, 2015. Sitaram Yechury had joined Twitter at least a week later. We found this by searching for his Twitter handle on webarchive.org. In the screenshot below, the date-time 8:13 PM, October 28, 2015 (highlighted in red) is in accordance with the time zone of the server where the screenshot was taken. The difference could be 12 hours (ahead or behind).
Furthermore, the tweet is not aligned with the profile picture as it should be.
A reverse search of the image took us to a report in The Hindu published in 2015. The headline of the article is similar to the text of the tweet. According to the article, “Mr. Yechury, who was in the Chinese capital to participate in an international conference of Asian political parties, called on President Xi last Thursday. In a conversation with The Hindu, following the meeting, Mr. Yechury said that President Xi conveyed to him that the Communist Party of China (CPC) highly valued its relations with the CPI (M).”
CPI(M) called-out the misinformation on Twitter and wrote that Yechury had joined the platform on October 27, 2015.
Stop Lie Manufacturing
Another example of sanghi dirty tricks@SitaramYechury joined Twitter on Oct 27, 2015. This fake tweet is dated oct 20.
Because CPI(M) has exposed Modi’s doublespeak, sanghis have become desperate. Where is the order to do all these things coming from? pic.twitter.com/ZYCkq07dHv— CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) June 22, 2020
A fake tweet was shared on social media to portray CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury referring to Chinese president Xi Jinping as his “boss”.
Independent journalism that speaks truth to power and is free of corporate and political control is possible only when people start contributing towards the same. Please consider donating towards this endeavour to fight fake news and misinformation.
