An old video of a man speaking about decolonising the climate movement and criticising the West for its contributions to climate change at Glasgow, UK, is going viral online. Claims suggest that the man is IAS officer Vijay Singh, and social media users are praising him for his candidness. BOOM found that the man is Vijay Prashad, journalist at Globetrotter and director of Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, and the video is from December 2021.
In the video, Vijay is heard talking about everything the West has taken resources and money from India for centuries, and how, in the present, they continue to condescend India and other developing nations for their contributions to climate change.
"You only know condescension... You like to say we are all in this together, and so on. We are not in this together. The United States: 4-5 percent of the world's population, still uses 25% of the world's resources. You outsource production to China and then you say China is the carbon polluter. China is producing your buckets, China is producing your nuts and bolts, China is producing your phones. Try to produce it in your own country and see your carbon emissions rise," he is heard saying while slamming the West's "colonial mindset".
The video is viral on Facebook with the caption, "Most daring speech of an Indian official on an international platform exposing the hypocrisy of western colonialists! Grand salute to Vijay Singh, IAS. 🇮🇳great courageous speech!"
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The video is also viral on Twitter with a similar caption.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the man in the video is not IAS Vijay Singh, but Vijay Prashad, a journalist and director of Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. Prashad is also a senior fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies in China and editor of LeftWord Books
A reverse image search of keyframes from the video led us to a LinkedIn post that praised the man's speech. The name specified in the post was Vijay Prashad, and not Vijay Singh.
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We then looked for Vijay Prashad's speech in Glasgow and found a video uploaded by COP26 Coalition on YouTube.
Vijay Prashad spoke at the COP26 Coalition's Summit for Climate Justice event 'Our Time is Now' on November 9, 2021 in Glasgow, UK. We also found this video on Climate Justice UK's official website and Facebook page. Prashad's talk begins at the 26:44 mark of the video.
Prashad himself took to Twitter to share this video and how it is going viral recently.