Misinformation about Hindus being targeted in Bangladesh fuels Islamophobia fears

Analysts said the fake news was aimed at inflaming anti-Muslim sentiment in India and undermining Bangladesh’s interim government

Since the sudden ouster of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina three weeks ago, news and social media in India have been filled with reports about Hindus in Bangladesh being targeted for attack by Muslims, with some even claiming an ongoing “Hindu genocide” is taking place in the country.
However, fact-checkers said that most accounts of attacks on the minority community were either exaggerated or false. Experts warned that such misinformation could be aimed at fuelling Islamophobia within India and undermining Bangladesh’s interim government.

While fact-checkers acknowledged that some Hindus have been the victims of attacks following Hasina’s resignation, they said the violence targeted members and supporters of the former prime minister’s ruling Awami League (AL) party, rather than being religiously motivated.

“Immediately after the Awami League party was thrown out of power, angry mobs violently attacked the party’s leaders and supporters, and killed many of them. During these attacks, houses and businesses of all communities, including Hindus, were targeted,” Agence France-Presse fact-checker for Bangladesh Qadaruddin Shishir told This Week in Asia.

“In most cases, the attacks were politically motivated, without stemming from any religious reasons. Some Hindu community leaders also told the local media that those attacks against Hindus did not stem from any religious reasons.”

Hindus constitute about 8 per cent of Bangladesh’s 170 million people and have historically supported Hasina’s AL, which identified itself as largely secular.

Hasina, in office since 2009, was long accused of authoritarianism and corruption. Rights groups have alleged that she misused state machinery to hold on to power, stifle dissent and torture and kill opposition political activists and others extrajudicially.

She resigned as Bangladesh’s prime minister on August 5 after weeks of deadly protests led by students against a government job quota system escalated into a broader movement demanding her resignation. Facing intense pressure and unrest, she fled to India.

The police were accused of brutally repressing students and civilian protesters under Hasina’s regime. According to Dhaka-based Human Rights Support Society, more than 800 students and other citizens were killed during the protests before her ouster.

As soon as her government fell, angry mobs targeted the police and AL party activists. In attacks that lasted up to two or three days, scores of police officers, party leaders and activists were attacked and lynched.

Angry mobs also attacked houses and businesses of AL party members, both Muslim and Hindu. Hindu groups reported that around 250 Hindu properties were attacked by the mobs, while fact-checkers estimated that around 1,500 Muslim houses and businesses across the country were vandalised, and around two dozen houses were set ablaze.

Gobinda Pramanik, president of Bangladesh National Hindu Grand Alliance said that he was not aware of any Hindu family that was attacked after Hasina’s ouster that did not have a connection with the AL.

“Almost all the Hindu households which were attacked had connections with the Awami League. Several times more Awami League-supporting Muslim households were attacked. Almost all were targeted because of their affiliation with the Awami League,” Pramanik told This Week in Asia.

Although the mob violence targeted Muslims as well as Hindus, Hindu groups in neighbouring India shared unverified visuals and information on social media spreading misleading views about what happened in Bangladesh.

Social media posts and reports in a number of mainstream Indian media outlets said that “Islamists” were targeting Hindus in violent communal attacks.

However, fact-checkers in India and Bangladesh swung into action and debunked disinformation regarding most of their claims.

One viral post on social media platform X featured a video claiming to show a Hindu woman in Bangladesh crying and saying that she had been asked by Islamists to either convert or leave the country.

Dismislab, a Bangladesh-based independent fact-checking organisation, said the woman in the video was in fact Muslim actress Azmeri Haque Badhan. In the video, the actress is heard saying that Bangladesh is her country and all should help reform the country, according to a Dismislab statement.

Another viral video aired on Indian TV channel Republic TV showed a Hindu temple in Chittagong, Bangladesh, that was claimed to have been set ablaze by “Islamists in Bangladesh”.

An investigation by Dismislab found that the temple had not in fact been targeted for arson.

“Those who circulated the video aimed to set out a message that the Hindu temple had been set on fire by Islamists. The caretaker of the temple told us that it had not been targeted in any attack at all,” lead researcher at Dismislab Minhaj Aman, told This Week in Asia.

“The caretaker also told us that, on August 5, a mob took out some furniture from an adjacent party office of AL and set fire to it. ‘I don’t know who spread this rumour that our temple was set ablaze,’ he said.”

Another post on X alleged that the house of Liton Das, a Hindu cricketer of the Bangladesh national team, had been set ablaze, sharing a photo of a burning house as “evidence”.

The post received over a million views and was shared by many accounts with identical claims.

However, a fact-checking team at German broadcaster Deutsche Welle found that Das’ house had not been set on fire. The DW team also revealed that house in the photo was of former cricketer Mashrafe Mortaza, a Bangladeshi Muslim and AL member of parliament whose house had been set ablaze by an angry mob.

According to Farhana Sultana, a professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, such disinformation “delegitimises the actual concerns of minorities, as they have had to counter misinformation” through statements and social media posts to show their homes, businesses and religious institutions are intact.

“Some Bangladeshi Hindus have even generated social media memes saying ‘Save Bangladeshi Hindus from Indian Hindus’,” Sultana added.

After the claims of Islamist attacks on Hindus surfaced, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised concerns about them publicly on August 15.

A day later, Muhammad Yunus, head of the newly installed caretaker government in Bangladesh, called up Modi and said the reports of attacks on Hindus were being “exaggerated”, and assured him that his government was committed to protecting every citizen in the country.

In a press statement from his office, Yunus said he told Modi his government is committed to “ensuring human rights for every citizen of the country”.

When the false claims about anti-Hindu attacks went viral on social media, many Muslim groups in Bangladesh decided to maintain vigil in front of Hindu temples across the country.

“Many Hindus were anxious. They feared their temples would be attacked by mobs. So, we began guarding the three temples in our locality round-the-clock as soon as the Hasina government fell,” Ruhul Amin, a senior madrasa student in Dhaka, told This Week in Asia.

“Hindus are our brothers. It was our duty to protect them ... Muslim groups guarded hundreds of temples in the same way for two or three days when the violence was going on.”

Fake news causing real harm

Social activist Zim Nawaz in India said by spreading exaggerated and false news about attacks against Hindus in Bangladesh, the right-wing Hindu groups and some pro-BJP media outlets aimed to whip up anti-Muslim fervour in India.

“This helps to spread Islamophobia and polarise the society on communal queues. Such a communal polarisation in the Hindu-majority society helps the BJP win more Hindu votes,” Nawaz told This Week in Asia.

Nawaz noted that during the campaigning before the general election in India earlier this year, Human Rights Watch found that Modi had made Islamophobic comments in 63 per cent of his speeches.

“The BJP aims to stay in power by dividing the society on communal queues. For this, the party needs support from Islamophobic fake news factories.”

Some analysts warned that the disinformation could also create real tensions between India and Bangladesh.

“Indian media reports about mass communal violence against the Hindu community in Bangladesh are being increasingly seen among sections of Bangladesh as propaganda designed to destabilise the new administration,” said Ashfaq Zaman, a Bangladesh-based international affairs expert.

“If this is not controlled, the collective sentiment could develop into real-time backlash [against India], even though there is no communal problem now,” he said.

Many people who resented Hasina’s regime “are developing anti-Indian sentiment with the perception that India is allying with the former regime rather than Bangladesh as a country”, Zaman said.

Ali Riaz, political analyst and professor of political science at Illinois State University, said the “well-orchestrated disinformation campaign” had been carried out by the Indian media and Hindu communal groups to undermine Bangladesh’s stability.

“If it were their concerns about other Hindus, these people would have condemned the deaths of Hindu students who were killed by police and AL thugs between July 15 and August 5. Their deafening silence during the period spoke volumes. The disinformation campaign and incendiary remarks are intended to destabilise Bangladesh and malign the interim government,” he told This Week in Asia.

With additional reporting by Biman Mukherji

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SCMP | August 23, 2023