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Rishi Sunak’s parents are both Hindu
A tweet claiming that new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is from the Luo tribe of Kenya is FALSE.
The tweet reads: “Now Britain has elected a Luo Prime Minister, Just like US did. Next ni sisi from Mt Kenya [Next is we from Mt Kenya].”
On Monday, 24 October 2022, Sunak won the race, becoming the third United Kingdom Prime Minister in 2022, following the resignation of Liz Truss, who had replaced Boris Johnson in September.
Sunak had one competitor — House of Commons leader and former Defence minister Penny Mordaunt — who got 30 votes against the new premier’s 150.
While Sunak’s father was born in Kenya, he is not from the Luo tribe. The roots of the new British PM are in Punjab, India, from where his grandparents migrated to Kenya and Tanzania.
Sunak, a Hindu and former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, was born in 1980 in the port city of Southampton, United Kingdom. His father, Yashvir Sunak, was born in Kenya while his mother, Usha Sunak, was born in Tanzania. The parents were married in Southampton, where they had migrated in the 1960s.
PesaCheck has looked into a tweet claiming that Britain’s new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is from the Luo tribe of Kenya and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Naomi Wanjiku and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
