Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms, which claimed that the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock landed in India but there were no officials to welcome her. During the investigation we found that the video is not from India but from Malaysia and is being shared with false claims.
Claim:
X user Tufail / S shared the video on his profile.
Other users too are sharing the video on their profiles.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video.
During this we found a video on X posted by GIC Southeast Asia handle on January 19, 2024.
We then did a Google keyword search on the above information mentioned in the post.
We also found her images similar to the visuals shared on the Facebook page of German Information Centre Southeast Asia. While her activities were enlisted in the post, there was no mention of India.
In an article by dw.com, the picture was captioned stating that the German FM visited Malaysia.
We also found a picture of her landing on fotos.europapress.es. The caption stated: 12 January 2024, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrives at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa
Date: 01/12/2024.
This confirmed that the video too was from Malaysia and not India.
A week ago EAM Jaishankar met German FM Annalena Baerbock in New Delhi.
There was a controversy over no red-carpet roll out for her during her visit to India last year in 2023. However, German ambassador Dr Philipp Ackermann issued a clarification later, stating that ‘Indian protocol did outstanding work’ the German ambassador clarified that the minister’s plane landed a little early in Delhi and she decided to leave without receiving line, that was entire German problem.
Conclusion: Viral video on X claiming German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock did not receive a formal welcome on the tarmac in India is actually from Malaysia. Viral claim is misleading.
