Claim: A picture shows US President Joe Biden kneeling in front of George Floyd’s daughter and asking for her forgiveness on behalf of the state.
Fact: The picture shows Biden speaking to C.J. Brown, the son of a Detroit store owner, while he was campaigning to become the President of the United States.
On 23 September 2023, X (formerly Twitter) user @Abbasbaig577 posted a picture (archive) showing US President Joe Biden down on one knee while speaking to a young Black child, with the following caption:
“یہ بچی جارج فلائیڈ کی بیٹی ہے جو کہ امریکہ میں پولیس کے ہاتھوں مارا جانے والا بے گناہ سیاہ فام تھا اور سامنے دنیا کا طاقتور ترین انسان امریکی صدر جوبائیڈن جو جھک کر اس بچی سے اس ریاست کی طرف سے معافی کا طلبگار ہے. یہ ہوتی ہے ریاستیں ماں جیسی …❣️
[This girl is the daughter of George Floyd, who was an innocent black man killed by the police in America, and, in front of her is the most powerful man in the world, US President Joe Biden, kneeling and asking for her forgiveness on behalf of the state. This is what ‘the state is like a mother’ means…❣️]”
User @Abbasbaig577 also tagged @PTIofficial, the X account of former prime minister Imran Khan’s political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which has been in dire straits ever since its chief was declared guilty in the Toshakhana case.
Imran Khan’s incarceration
In a short order, cited here (archive), Additional District and Sessions Judge (ADSJ) Humayun Dilawar of an Islamabad trial court said the ex-PM hid “the benefits he accrued from the national exchequer wilfully and intentionally” and “cheated while providing information of gifts he obtained from Toshakhana which later proved to be false and inaccurate” during his tenure from 2018 to 2022.
Khan — whose “dishonesty has been established beyond doubt”, as per the judge — was given a three-year jail sentence.
The claim has likely surfaced amidst a “controversy” around the death of PTI leader Mian Abbad Farooq’s son, Ammar, on 18 September. The party member “is incarcerated over the May 9 violence and is awaiting a military trial”, according to this report. This has led to some people alleging that the government is responsible for the child’s death and, thus, demanding an independent inquiry.
The 45-year-old George Floyd was a victim of police brutality; he was killed on 25 May 2020 when an officer of the Minneapolis Police Department kneeled on his neck, leaving him unable to breathe, with two others pinning him down. A total of four cops were involved, namely Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the image and found it here in a 29 September 2020 article by CNBC; the picture is dated 9 September 2020, meaning it was taken months before Joe Biden assumed office as the US President on 20 January 2021.
Shot by photographer Chip Somodevilla for Getty Images, the photo shows Biden during a presidential campaign while wearing a face mask since the COVID-19 pandemic was nearing its peak.
At the time a Democratic presidential nominee, Biden had kneeled “to chat with C.J. Brown while shopping” on the Avenue of Fashion in Detroit, Michigan. Brown is the son of the owner of an apparel store called Three Thirteen.
Many more photos of the encounter are available on Getty Images and Reuters Pictures here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Therefore, not only is it false that the child is the daughter of George Floyd, as the child is a boy and not a girl, but it is also incorrect to claim that the image shows Biden “asking for her forgiveness on behalf of the state”. The photograph was taken when he was a presidential candidate and not the actual president, which proves the entire claim wrong.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the period from 1 August 2023 to 26 September using the search term “یہ بچی جارج فلائیڈ کی بیٹی ہے جو کہ امریکہ میں پولیس کے ہاتھوں مارا جانے والا بے گناہ سیاہ فام تھا.”
The posts started to appear on 17 August 2023, with the search displaying over 200 posts on Facebook that gained 17,370 interactions.
On X, it was also shared by Nadir Baloch — a “Journalist [who has] worked with @SamaaTv, Dawn News, Abbtakk Tv, ARY News” — here (archive).
It was also posted by Ihsan Naseem — “Chief Editor Daily Abbaseen Battagram & Reporter Neo News Battagram” — here (archive) on X.
User @Hpolitics99 wrote (archive) some additional text, which is as follows:
“یہ گورے ہمارے لیے جیسے بھی ہیں مگر اپنے لوگوں کے لیے انہوں نے بہترین معاشرہ تشکیل دیا ہے کیونکہ یہ جانتے ہیں انصاف کے بغیر معاشرہ تباہ و برباد ہو جاتا ہے جس دن ہم بھی ہجوم سے ایک قوم بن گئے بڑے بڑے طاقتور اسی طرح ہمارے سامنے جھکے ہوں گے
[No matter how these white people behave with us, they have created the best society for their own people because they know that a society is destroyed without justice. The day when we transform from a mere crowd to a nation, the mighty will bow before us in the same way.]”
Some of the Facebook posts carrying the claim that gained significant traction can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Others — such as this and this — compared the falsely captioned image to the Sahiwal killings, wherein the “Punjab Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) opened fire on a car carrying a family, killing the couple, their teenage daughter, and their neighbour”.
Yet another user added to the accompanying text, writing:
“ایسی ہوتی ہے ریاستیں ماں کے جیسی، ہم تو نغموں میں، تقریروں میں، ٹی وی پر بیٹھ کر یہ سب ڈرامے کرتے ہیں. اپنی غلیظ ذہنیت، اپنی مکاریوں کے کمال فن سے اپنی عوام کے ساتھ. کیا اپ یہ سب کچھ اسلامی جمہوریہ پاکستان میں اگلے پانچ سو سال تک تصور کر سکتے ہیں، اپنے دل پر ہاتھ رکھ جواب دیں
[Such are states that are like mothers; we do all these dramas in songs, speeches, sitting on TV with our people with our dirty mentality, with the perfect art of our tricks. Can you imagine all this happening in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in the next five hundred years, put your hand on your heart and answer.]”
Conclusion: The picture shows Biden talking to C.J. Brown, the son of a Detroit store owner, while he was on a campaign trail months before he became the US president.
Background image in cover photo: munshots
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