Video shows the Paris catacombs, not Bangladesh military detention facility
- Published on September 3, 2024 at 10:22
- 3 min read
- By Eyamin Sajid, AFP Bangladesh
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"Who knows how many mothers' sons ended up here? The underground (floor) of Aynaghar," read the Bengali-language caption of a Facebook post that shared a video on August 7, 2024.
The video -- viewed more than one million times -- shows piles of bones in a narrow dark corridor.
The false video surfaced after several prominent figures -- including the son of a former Jamaat-e-Islami political party head Al Azmi, rights activist Michael Chakma and Bangladeshi barrister Ahmad Bin Quasem -- were released from a secret prison run by the country's army intelligence following the ouster of Hasina.
The facility was also known as Aynaghar, or "House of Mirrors" because its detainees were never supposed to see other prisoners besides themselves.
Quasem told AFP he believed he was detained at the facility because his father was accused of running a paramilitary group that tortured pro-independence Bangladeshis during the country's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan (archived link).
He said he was shackled around the clock in windowless solitary confinement.
Human Rights Watch said in 2023 that security forces had committed "over 600 enforced disappearances" since Hasina came to power in 2009.
Hasina's government consistently maintained that the facility did not exist, but a 2022 whistleblower's account detailed the horrible treatment within the centre (archived link).
The false claim was also shared on YouTube and TikTok.
However, the video shows the Paris catacombs, the massive underground ossuary in the French capital.
Paris catacombs
A reverse image search in Google found the same video was published on social media platform X on June 17, 2024 (archived link).
A watermark "Samara Adventures" could be seen at the video's four-second mark. The name led to a corresponding Instagram page that specialises in urban exploration, which published the same video on April 21, 2024 (archived link).
"Catacombs adventures," the video's caption read. "This one is not my most beautiful video, but you can feel the real catacombs vibes."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false video (left) and the Instagram video (right):
Content warning
The same video was uploaded to a TikTok account with the same username on April 27 that also said it was filmed in the Paris catacombs (archived link).
The TikTok account also published other footage that appeared to show the Paris catacombs here and here (archived links here and here).
The Paris catacombs are one of the city's most popular attractions and lure some 500,000 visitors a year, although some parts are not open to the public.
The underground burial ground houses the bones of approximately six million people collected from various cemeteries in Paris in the late 1700s.
The transfer of human remains from Parisian cemeteries to the tunnels began towards the end of the 18th century when authorities realised that the decomposition of bodies in the city's cemeteries was not particularly good for public health.
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