During the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Chief Adviser Dr. Muhammad Yunus and his accompanying delegation from Bangladesh were in the United States. On September 26, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his address at this session. Following this, a photograph of Dr. Yunus and the Bangladeshi delegation began circulating on social media with claims that, while many other countries' representatives walked out during Netanyahu’s speech, Dr. Yunus and his delegation remained present in the hall.

Fact-check

Rumor Scanner’s investigation revealed that Chief Adviser Dr. Muhammad Yunus and his accompanying Bangladeshi delegates were not present in the General Assembly Hall during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech. This has been verified through several live video recordings of Netanyahu’s address.

A full video of Netanyahu’s speech, published on the United Nations’ official YouTube channel on September 26, clearly shows the seat allocated to Bangladesh at several time stamps—specifically at 7:10, 20:35, and 34:17—being unoccupied.

Furthermore, Netanyahu’s speech was livestreamed on the official YouTube channel of the Israeli Prime Minister, as well as on the German news outlet Deutsche Welle’s YouTube channel, which broadcast the General Assembly’s proceedings from the beginning of that day’s session. In all of these sources, Bangladesh’s seat is visibly vacant during Netanyahu’s address.

In addition, a Facebook post dated September 27 from the account of Abul Kalam Azad Majumdar, Deputy Press Secretary to the Chief Adviser, stated that Dr. Yunus had two scheduled programs on the morning of September 26 local time in New York. The first was a meeting at 9 a.m. at the hotel with officials from the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, an international platform comprising former presidents and prime ministers from various countries. The second was a meeting with the Prime Minister of Bhutan, held at the UN Headquarters at 10:30 a.m. After these engagements, the Bangladesh delegation entered the General Assembly Hall while the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, was delivering his speech. By that time, the leaders of Israel, Pakistan, and China had already concluded their addresses. The social media narrative suggesting that the Bangladesh delegation was present during Netanyahu’s speech was termed by Majumdar as nothing more than a disinformation campaign by reactionary forces, adding that “falsehood is now their only weapon.”

The image being used to support the claim—that Dr. Yunus and the delegation were present during the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech—was posted on the Chief Adviser’s official Facebook page on September 26. The caption clarifies that the image was taken just before Dr. Yunus delivered his own speech at the UNGA session.

Based on the above evidence, it is clear that Dr. Muhammad Yunus and his accompanying delegates were not present in the hall during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address at the United Nations.

Therefore, the claim that the Bangladeshi delegation was present during Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly is false.

Original News Source: https://rumorscanner.com/fact-check/bangladesh-delegate-was-present-during-netanyahu-speech/169015