logo
Posts falsely link old images to July 2025 Bangladesh protest

Posts falsely link old images to July 2025 Bangladesh protest

Yahoo12 hours ago
Clashes involving supporters of ousted Bangladeshi premier Sheikh Hasina and security forces in July 2025 killed at least five people, but photos and videos shared in social media posts about the violence are old. The visuals predate the latest unrest by years, while a circulating video from June shows the arrest of a man who tried to steal a cow.
"Dressed in police uniforms, they are shooting ordinary people indiscriminately after shutting down the internet in Gopalganj," reads a Bengali-language Facebook post shared on July 16, 2025.
The attached photo shows armed policemen standing in a street.
The post was shared after clashes erupted in Hasina's hometown of Gopalganj on July 16 when members of her Awami League party tried to foil a rally by the National Citizens Party (NCP), made up of many students who spearheaded the uprising that toppled her government last year (archived link).
Human rights activists said security forces had fired indiscriminately during the unrest, killing at least five people.
A separate Facebook post on July 17 featured a photo collage of men holding firearms, with a caption that suggested it showed members of the Awami League in Gopalganj.
A separate video of police loading a man onto a police van surfaced on YouTube with the caption "Gopalganj" on July 17.
Hasina's son, Sajeeb Wazed, had also shared the clip alongside claims it showed police handling a protester that was killed in a "shooting", though his post has since been taken down (archived link).
Other posts on Instagram and YouTube also linked the visuals to the unrest in Gopalganj.
But reverse image searches showed the photos and video are old and unrelated to the clashes.
The photo of the armed police was published by local online outlet News Bangla in September 2022 in a report about a policeman who shot an activist during a rally by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to celebrate the organisation's founding (archived link).
"On September 1, during a clash with BNP leaders and activists in Narayanganj, Intelligence Bureau Sub-Inspector Mahfuzur Rahman Kanak picked up another policeman's rifle and shot him," the caption of the photo says.
The report says Kanak was removed from the intelligence force and transferred to the district police.
The photo of a man holding a firearm shared in the collage was published by Jago News in a report about pro-government groups using weapons against student protesters pushing for a reform of the quota system for public sector jobs in the southeastern port city of Chittagong on July 16, 2024 (archived link).
Those demonstrations eventually led to the wider anti-government uprising that year (archived link).
The men seen in the other three images used in the collage match those seen in a photo published by The Daily Star on July 17, 2024 about the same protest (archived link).
AFP found a higher resolution version of the video of a man being loaded onto a van in a Facebook post on June 4, 2025 (archived link).
"A robber was caught at Bhadughar Bus Stand cattle market and beaten up before handed over to the police," its caption says.
The Bhadughar Bus Stand is located in the eastern town of Brahmanbaria Upazila, about 170 kilometres (105 miles) from Gopalganj.
Mozaffar Hossain, an officer in-charge at the local Brahmanbaria Sadar Model Police Station told AFP on July 24 the video was filmed at the Bhadughar Bus Stand cattle market on June 4.
"The public caught the man red-handed when he attempted to steal a cow. He was handed over to us after being beaten by the people. Later we produced him before court," he said.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Israeli settler kills Palestinian activist who worked on Oscar-winning film
Israeli settler kills Palestinian activist who worked on Oscar-winning film

CNN

time2 hours ago

  • CNN

Israeli settler kills Palestinian activist who worked on Oscar-winning film

FacebookTweetLink A prominent Palestinian activist who had worked on an Oscar-winning documentary died on Monday after being shot by a Jewish settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to local journalists and officials. Odeh Hathalin, who was a consultant on 'No Other Land,' a film that documents Israeli settler and military attacks on the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, was shot in the village of Umm al-Khair, in that same community. Israeli police said its forces arrived at the scene and detained an Israeli civilian, who was later arrested for questioning. Police did not identify the man they arrested. The Israeli military claimed that 'terrorists hurled rocks toward Israeli civilians near Carmel,' an Israeli settlement near Umm al-Khair. Hathalin's shooting was first reported by Yuval Abraham, the Israeli investigative journalist who co-directed 'No Other Land.' Abraham said Hathalin was 'shot in the upper body' and was in critical condition. Later, the Palestinian health ministry said he had died of his injuries. Many settlers are armed, and violence in the West Bank has surged since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. At least 964 Palestinians have been killed since then by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations. Settlers have a strong influence on Israeli politics, and in the rare cases where they are arrested for violent attacks against Palestinians, they are often released without charge. Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are illegal under international law. Ofer Cassif, a left-wing member of Israel's parliament, has demanded that authorities launch an investigation into Hathalin's death. 'The incident occurred in broad daylight, in front of cameras, with no fear of legal consequences – testament to the paralysis of law enforcement and the complete sense of immunity enjoyed by violent settlers,' Cassif wrote in a letter to Israel's Attorney General. Basel Adra, a Palestinian journalist and a co-director of 'No Other Land,' shared testimony to his 'dear friend' Hathalin. 'He was standing in front of the community settler in his village when a settler fired a bullet that pierced his chest and took his life. This is how Israel erases us – one life at a time,' Adra wrote in a post on Instagram. Last month, Hathalin was detained at San Francisco International Airport upon arrival and deported after immigration officials revoked his visa, local media reported. He had been invited to visit a California synagogue as part of an interfaith speaking tour. CNN reported in March that settlers had also targeted Hamdan Ballal, another co-director of 'No Other Land,' outside his home in the village of Susya, also in Masser Yatta. Ballal, who had recently returned from Los Angeles to accept an Oscar for the film, told CNN he thought the group of settlers would kill him. He was detained by Israeli soldiers, handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten. The film 'No Other Land,' which tracked the destruction of the Masser Yatta community between 2019 and 2023, won Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2024 Oscars. Its final scene shows Adra's cousin, Zakara al-Adra, being shot by an Israeli settler in October 2023. Previous reporting from CNN's Kara Fox, Kareem Khadder and Jeremy Diamond.

A year after anti-immigrant riots in Britain, many worry it could happen again
A year after anti-immigrant riots in Britain, many worry it could happen again

Washington Post

time2 hours ago

  • Washington Post

A year after anti-immigrant riots in Britain, many worry it could happen again

LONDON — The killing of three girls at a summer dance class in England a year ago Tuesday, by a teenager misidentified as a migrant, triggered days of street violence directed at newcomers and minorities. In the aftermath, communities came together to clear up the physical damage — but repairing the country's social fabric is harder. Experts and community groups warn that the mix of anger, fear, misinformation and political agitating that fueled the violence remains. In recent weeks it has bubbled over again on the streets of Epping , near London.

A year after anti-immigrant riots in Britain, many worry it could happen again
A year after anti-immigrant riots in Britain, many worry it could happen again

Associated Press

time2 hours ago

  • Associated Press

A year after anti-immigrant riots in Britain, many worry it could happen again

LONDON (AP) — The killing of three girls at a summer dance class in England a year ago Tuesday, by a teenager misidentified as a migrant, triggered days of street violence directed at newcomers and minorities. In the aftermath, communities came together to clear up the physical damage — but repairing the country's social fabric is harder. Experts and community groups warn that the mix of anger, fear, misinformation and political agitating that fueled the violence remains. In recent weeks it has bubbled over again on the streets of Epping, near London. 'Given a trigger event, none of the conditions of what happened last year have gone away,' said Sunder Katwala of British Future, a think tank that looks at issues including integration and national identity. He said there is a 'tense and quite febrile atmosphere' in some parts of the country. A solemn anniversary Three minutes of silence will be held Tuesday in the seaside town of Southport in northwest England, where the stabbing attack left three girls under 10 dead and eight children and two adults wounded. Over the following days, violence erupted in Southport and across England, driven partly by online misinformation saying the attacker was a migrant who had arrived in the U.K. by small boat. Because of British contempt of court and privacy laws, authorities were initially slow to disclose the suspect's identity: Axel Rudakubana, a British-born 17-year-old obsessed with violence. He later pleaded guilty to murder and is serving a life sentence. In the week after the attack, crowds in more than two dozen towns attacked hotels housing migrants, as well as mosques, police stations and a library. Some rioters targeted non-white people and threw bricks and fireworks at police. With a few days, larger numbers of people took to the streets to reclaim their communities, sweeping up broken glass and sending a message of welcome to newcomers. Tinderbox Britain A year on, the sight of migrants crossing the English Channel in dinghies — more than 22,000 so far this year — provides a focus for those concerned about the impact of immigration. Those concerns are often amplified by online rumor, scapegoating and misinformation, some of it deliberate. Add a sluggish economy, high housing costs, frayed public services and widespread distrust in politicians, and Britain, in the view of many commentators, has become a 'tinderbox.' Nigel Farage, leader of hard-right political party Reform UK, said last week that the country is close to 'civil disobedience on a vast scale.' The left-of-center Labour government agrees there is a problem. At a Cabinet meeting last week, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner noted that 17 of the 18 places that saw the worst disorder last year were among the most deprived in the country. She said that Britain is 'a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country,' but the government must show it has 'a plan to address people's concerns and provide opportunities for everyone to flourish.' The government has pledged to stop migrants trying to reach Britain across the Channel and to end the practice of lodging asylum-seekers in hotels, which have become flashpoints for tension. Critics say the government risks legitimizing protesters who in many cases are driven by intolerance and want to drive immigrants from their homes. In Ballymena, Northern Ireland, last month, rioters threw bricks, bottles, petrol bombs and fireworks and firebombed immigrants' houses after two Romanian-speaking 14-year-old boys were charged with sexual assault. Hundreds of people have protested this month outside a hotel housing asylum-seekers in Epping, a town on the edge of London, after a recently arrived migrant from Ethiopia was charged with sexual assault. He denies the charge. Scattered protests Protesters in Epping and a handful of other communities this summer have included local people, but also members of organized far-right groups who hope to capitalize on discord. Tiff Lynch, who heads the Police Federation officers union, wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the Epping disorder was 'a reminder of how little it takes for tensions to erupt and how ill-prepared we remain to deal with it.' Learning from last summer's violence, where the police and courts responded quickly to detain and charge hundreds of suspects, police have charged more than a dozen people over violence in Epping. A protest and antiracist counter-demonstration in the town on the weekend were peaceful. The online realm is harder to police. The British government, like others around the world, has struggled with how to stop toxic content on sites including X. Under the ownership of self-styled free-speech champion Elon Musk, X has gutted teams that once fought misinformation and restored the accounts of banned conspiracy theories and extremists. The government has cited the amount of time people spend alone online as a factor behind polarization and fraying social bonds. Grounds for optimism Families of the three girls who died in Southport — Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and 6-year-old Bebe King — have called for quiet and respectful commemorations. Local authorities have asked people not to lay flowers, but to consider donating to causes set up in the victim's memories. The team behind Elsie's Story, a children's charity set up by Stancombe's family, posted on Instagram: 'Our girls, our town, will not be remembered for the events of that day, but for everything we are building together.' Katwala said that despite a 'sense of disconnection and frustration at national politics and national institutions,' there are grounds for optimism. 'Britain is less heated and less polarized than the United States, by quite a long way,' he said. 'People's interpersonal trust remains quite high. Seven out of 10 people think their local area is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well. They're just worried about the state of the nation.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store