Bangladesh pro-govt accounts share edited video targeting opposition politician
- Published on July 16, 2024 at 09:28
- 2 min read
- By Qadaruddin SHISHIR, AFP Bangladesh
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"Rumeen Farhana is making a TikTok video on the Purbachal Expressway," read a Bengali-language Facebook post that shared the edited clip on May 21.
The video -- which racked up 1.9 million views -- appears to show Rumeen on a bridge singing a love song.
Rumeen, a fierce critic of the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, is a former member of parliament for Bangladesh's main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) who resigned from her seat along with several other party lawmakers in 2022 (archived here).
She is frequently targeted by disinformation, including a fake medical note saying she was suffering from mental illness that circulated online ahead of Bangladesh's election in January (archived link).
The BNP's ranks were decimated by mass arrests ahead of the polls, which the party boycotted and condemned as a "sham".
The edited video was shared by various Facebook pages that expressed support for the ruling Awami League party.
Facebook removed scores of accounts and pages linked to the Awami League for "coordinated inauthentic behaviour", including disinformation targeting the BNP in the run-up to the election, Meta said in May (archived link).
One of those pages, "Dhaka Television" has the same name and logo as a TikTok account that shared the edited video of Rumeen singing.
The posts prompted mockery towards Rumeen, including one comment that she was "trying to be a TikToker as she knows her party BNP has no future".
Edited video
A Google reverse image search of the video found the original footage of a different woman singing.
Bangladeshi singer and influencer Nafisa Nushrat Pronome posted her performance of "I Fall in Love" on Facebook and Instagram on May 1, 2024 (archived links here and here).
The video was edited to replace her face with that of Rumeen Farhana.
Below is a close-up of the edited video (left) and the original video showing Pronome (right):
Pronome regularly posts similar videos of herself on Facebook and Instagram (archived here and here).
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