Fact Check: Video claiming to be France farewell to Rafale is FALSE
By Mounika Dasari Published on 4 Aug 2020 4:00 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A video is being widely circulated on social media platforms like Facebook with a claim that France arranged farewell to Rafale. The video was shared on Facebook by the profile name Viraf Mehta. The title says as, "Everyone talked about Rafale landing in India but see the farewell from France with Indian TriColors." The archived version of the post can be seen here.
Archived claim can be found here.
Fact Check:
The claim is FALSE.
The video is of Italy's Republic Day celebrations in its capital Rome. Several videos of Italy's Republic Day celebrations are available on the Internet, which shows visuals similar to the viral video.
Italy celebrates its Republic Day on June 2, in which its Air Force performs synchronized stunts, forming the Italian tricolor in the skies. The grand building seen in the viral video is of Victor Emmanuel II National Monument from where the Republic Day parade begins. The Italian national flag can also be seen in the video.
The Indian and Italian national flags have near-similar colors, because of which social media users got misled. The Italian flag has vertical pale shades of green, white and red, and the Indian flag has horizontal pale shades of saffron, white and green.
According to a Boom Live article posted on August 17, 2019, the same video went viral on social media claiming to be India's 73 Independence Day celebrated in London's Trafalgar Square with fighter jets performing a flyover.
The colours seen in the video belong to Italian flag, not Indian Flag.
Hence, the video's claim that it is of France farewell to Rafale is False.
