Video shows teaser for short film, not attack on exiled Bangladesh blogger
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on August 23, 2023 at 10:48
- 3 min read
- By AFP Bangladesh
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"Asad Noor is getting rewarded! Praise be to God! God tolerates you for some time, but not forever," reads a Bengali-language Facebook post shared on on August 7.
The 14-second clip, which has more than 500,000 views, appears to show a man trying to escape from a mob hitting him and shouting "Catch him, catch him!" and "Beat him!"
Asad Noor is a blogger that the human rights group Amnesty International says left Bangladesh in February 2019 to seek protection abroad after being detained for several months in December 2017 and again in September 2018 (archived link).
Noor had been detained on charges that he defamed Islam and the Prophet Mohammed -- charges that could have seen him jailed for up to 14 years if found guilty under the country's strict internet laws.
He continues to blog while in exile, and local media reported he was denounced by groups in Bangladesh for posting allegedly blasphemous video content about the Prophet Mohammed (archived link).
The same video was also shared alongside similar claims elsewhere on Facebook here and here.
But the video does not show Noor being chased down a street; it in fact shows a scene from a short online film.
A reverse image search using keyframes from the video found the same footage posted on July 30 on a Facebook page called "Roshovonggo" (archived links here and here).
The video is captioned: "Mob beating".
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false Facebook post (left) and the video posted on the Roshovonggo page (right):
The clip was posted as a teaser for an upcoming film called "Petty Leader" about a fictional local political leader who is punished by the local populace (archived link). The film was later uploaded to Facebook on August 8.
The description accompanying the film includes a clarification about the misleading use of the teaser clip.
"We posted a scene from this film previously on our Facebook and Tiktok accounts which was wrongly perceived by many to be a video of Asad Noor. Please verify before claiming something," it says.
The Roshovonggo page is owned by Akash Chowdhury Lelin, a photographer and content creator who regularly produces comedic clips and posts them on social media (archived link).
Akash told AFP that he played the person being chased in the video.
"The man being chased in the video is not Asad Noor, it's me. I played the role of a local leader in the original film," he said on August 14.
The scene was filmed on Pagla Kanay Road in Jhenaidah, southwestern Bangladesh (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the scene (left) and the road as seen on Google Street View (right), with corresponding features highlighted by AFP:
Akash also wrote about the false claims shared alongside his clip in a Facebook post on August 7 (archived link).
"Many have been confusing me with Asad Noor," he wrote.
"Both of us having long hair may have contributed to this confusion. I am posting these clips and photos to clear up any doubts."
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