Claim: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto reached out to Pakistani students in Columbia University and NYU, both rejected to being his audience for a talk
Fact: Bilawal Bhutto never contacted Pakistani students in NYU or Columbia University and so was never rejected by him
On May 27, Shandana Gulzar Khan, a former PTI MNA made a tweet claiming that she has been told by “a person in a sensitive post”, that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari reached out to Pakistani students at Columbia University and New York University, requesting them to arrange a talk with him but both organizations refused. The thread continues onwards and claims that after these two disappointments, Bhutto asked Pakistani students at Cornell to arrange a talk with him, which they first accepted and then at the insistence of the general student body, eventually rejected as well.
This thread gathered 1,622 Likes, RTs and replies and has been shared to at least 562,647 followers on Twitter.
The following day, on May 28, the Pakistani Students Association at NYU and the Organization of Pakistani Students at Columbia University both made announcements on Facebook clarifying that Bilawal Bhutto never contacted them so naturally they never rejected his proposal.
To confirm with the final university, we reached out to the Pakistani students’ organization at Cornell on their Facebook page ‘Cornell University Pakistani Students Association’. They directed us to an Instagram post which clarified the same as the other two organizations.
