Did author and self-proclaimed naturopathic practitioner Robert O. Young present legitimate testimony that admits that governments are using medicine to "exterminate" Black people? No, that's not true: The International Tribunal for Natural Justice (ITNJ) is not a real court of law and the statements made by Young in his "testimony" are not based in fact.
The claim, which has made rounds on social media since at least the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reappeared in a Facebook post (archived here) on January 12, 2022. The post includes a repost of a TikTok video found here (archived here). The user in the video prefaces Young's testimonial by saying:
Hey Black people, this is just for you, because this guy is admitting to the fact that governments are trying to exterminate you.
The video shows a portion of Young's "testimony," where he asserts that medicine is designed "for the purpose of sterilization and population control" and that billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said that three billion people need to die to achieve a stable population. To reach such a goal, Young said that medicine is tested on Africans.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook on January 19, 2022:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Jan 19 21:00 2022 UTC)
The ITNJ is not an actual court of law, meaning that Young was not "admitting" to anything. According to the contribution page on the ITNJ website, donations to the organization are sent through the Committee to Support the ITNJ, a 501(c)3 "registered charity." The ITNJ website also states that the organization "belongs to the People and is not controlled by any nation, state, corporation, or 'special interests'" and is run by volunteers.
Young's "testimony," which was posted on the ITNJ website in 2019, has been the subject of several fact checks from other fact-checking organizations (see here and here for examples). According to a fact check from AFP, the "three billion people" comment that Young attributed to Gates appeared to be a misinterpretation of a statement Gates made in a 2010 TED Talk about reducing the rate of population growth. Young did not provide any evidence to support his claim that Africans were being killed in the name of depopulation at the time he made his statement.
Young, who wrote the dieting book "The pH Miracle," was convicted of practicing medicine without a license and sentenced in 2017. In 2018, a jury awarded one of Young's former patients $105 million because of what they determined to be Young's fraudulent cancer treatments. In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission also sent Young a warning letter about advertisements that he "unlawfully" posted to his websites and social media accounts that touted supposed COVID prevention methods and treatments.
