Fact Check: Reports about France rejecting 183 visas of Pakistani nationals are false

Hyderabad: French President Emanuel Macron is facing a lot of criticism over his recent remarks on Islam following the brutal killing of French teacher Samuel Patty. Several leaders of Muslim countries, including Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, have condemned Macron's remarks as Islamophobic.
Several media houses and social media users claimed that in retaliation to Imran Khan's recent remarks, France has rejected 183 visitor visas provided to Pakistani nationals in France. These reports further claimed that 118 citizens have been forcefully deported from France so far.
Several media houses, including DNA India, Yahoo News, Amar Ujala, and others have reported the same.
All these media houses cited a tweet by Twitter handle @PakConsulateFr with the username 'Consulate General Of Pakistan France' as the source for the news. The tweet reads, "183 visitor visa provided to our citizens has been found to be rejected by french authorities following the criticism by PM Imran khan. 118 citizen with proper documents were deported forcefully. We're currently in touch with french authority to give our citizens temporary stay (sic)."
183 visitor visa provided to our citizens has been found to be rejected by french authorities following the criticism by PM Imran khan. 118 citizen with proper documents were deported forcefully. We're currently in touch with french authority to give our citizens temporary stay.
— Consulate General Of Pakistan France (@PakConsulateFr) October 31, 2020
Archive Tweet
The news went viral on both Facebook and Twitter.
Archive post
Consulate General Of Paxtan France said that the French authorities have rejected 183 visitor visas of Paxtan citizens following Prime Minister Imran Khan's remarks on French President Emmanuel Macron.Well done France this is how deal with T£rror state 👏
— Ashwin (@Ashwinkiing) November 1, 2020
The Embassy of Pakistan in Paris, France has only one Twitter account @PakInFrance. Any other account claiming to represent the Embassy anywhere in France is fake & misleading & may be reported to @Twitter.@FakeNews_Buster @ForeignOfficePk @MoIB_Official pic.twitter.com/35y7NhXBkh
— Embassy of Pakistan, Paris, France (@PakinFrance) November 1, 2020
Archive Tweet
A keyword search led to an article by Pakistani news channel Geo News which had fact-checked the article and debunked the claim.
NewsMeter also examined the profile of the fake Twitter handle @PakConsulateFr which was created in April 2020. This account has only 448 followers and has posted 27 tweets so far. This Twitter profile also doesn't have any official website links which is unusual for an official account. All this makes the account suspicious.
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Source: Twitter
Whereas the official Twitter handle @PakinFrance, created nine years ago, has 4,715 followers. This handle has posted 20.8K tweets so far and it also carries a link to its official website pakembparis.com.
Source: Twitter
In conclusion, reports about the cancellation of 183 visas of Pakistani nationals in France are based on a fake Twitter account. Therefore, these viral claims are FALSE.
Vamsi Krishna Pothuru completed his Masters in Communication from The University of Hyderabad. He has interned with The New Indian Express and Kriti Social Initiatives. With the specialization of media research in masters, he submitted his thesis on the topic of "Fact-checking Initiatives and their response to Fake News in India." He believes that fact-checkers have a huge role to play in the fight against fake news which is a dangerous undercurrent in social media reinforcing hatred and false perceptions. Along with fact-checking, he is also interested in writing about environmental issues and human interest stories.