Bangladesh is burning. Those fueling the fury are usual longtime culprits – Jamaat-e-Islami and BNP. They have not only ensured that blood stains the roads of Dhaka, their proxies have spun a dubious web of cyber propaganda to keep the embers lit and lies seeping into the minds of innocent Bangladeshis, especially the youths and students.
Just to estimate the scale of violence, about 150 people have been killed in the mayhem, and hundreds more are under treatment for moderate to serious injuries.
Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the most elected Prime Minister of the country, looks embattled and broken. The march of democracy under her stewardship has been ferociously torpedoed, rekindling memories of the Bangla Liberation War of 1971.
Hatching Web of Conspiracies
Now any battle between antagonist forces is fought as much in virtual space as it is fought on streets. Bangladeshis already have an edge over others in modern usage of online platforms. The first-ever YouTube video upload was by a Bangladeshi.
As the present agitation over reservation to grandchildren of freedom fighters began to build up in April onwards, a shadowy force of cyber warriors put up a front to fan the flames. A number of bot accounts suddenly emerged in May, and the protests turned more vehement and political by July.
The dfrac.org, a Delhi-based investigative portal that traces trends and tactics of online fake news peddlers, unearthed that a crop of anti-government hashtags are amplifying and spreading inflammatory narratives to exploit and worsen the situation (https://x.com/DFRAC_org/status/1815375535653990873). Misleading and hateful hashtags were beamed from diverse locations across the globe.
These accounts posted identical text in all their posts, mainly sharing screenshots from the violence in Bangladesh, says the DFRAC report, maligning the Hasina government. One post shared widely claimed that Hasina has hired terrorists to murderously quell the student strike. One such viral post claimed that Hasina has called the Indian Army to fire on protest marchers.
Images of dead students with malicious texts were shared to brainwash Bangla youths to join protests on an issue that is already being tackled by the government and judiciary. An interesting pattern of these propaganda bots is that they shoot a message in different guises, some even appearing as sleazy videos.
The DFRAC investigation found that a website link was attached to every post from these bot accounts. Investigating the link revealed malicious behaviour, redirecting to PADSIMS.COM, a domain identified for scams, phishing, malware, and business email compromise (BEC), confirming the accounts’ involvement in abusive activities.
The DFRAC analysis of more than 1,040 tweets done from the bot accounts revealed that they beamed similar contents in a set frequency of time to catch attention of Twitterers.
This poisonous game of manufacturing public perception continues unchecked as Cyber policing and control over the Internet is little effective. The DFRAC report didn’t confirm that these cyber bots are being operated by the BNP-Jamaat clique, but their content echoes the narrative of this staunch anti-Hasina camp.
Andolan, 1971 Redux and BNP-Jamaat
1971 walks with Bangladesh, inspiring its march into a confident future. Sometimes, it devours its own sons, on whichever political divide they are. Legatees of liberation want to pivot their country aligned with the modern model of nation – secular, progressive and productive.
Torch-bearers of freedom-opponents refuse to bury their grievances and turn destructively disruptive whenever any opportunity emerges. The present agitation was a peaceful eruption of complaints against “unfairness”. Youths were angry at the 30% quota favour restored by the High Court to the third generation of 1971 freedom fighters. The Hasina government was all ears to demands and decided to challenge it in the Supreme Court and the hearing will take place on August 7.
The government has clearly declared that it agrees with the students.
However, the BNP which boycotted the January election was waiting for any disturbance to restart its “Hatao Hasina (Remove Hasina)” drive. Whenever any people-centric crisis builds up, the BNP-Jamaat nexus hits the streets and hangs up till the blood spills.
“…they (BNP-Jamaat) tried to prevent us from holding the election (January 7), but we held it. Then they thought the election would not be accepted by all, but it was accepted. Finally, we formed the government. But I had an apprehension that there would be a strike like this (recent violence),” Hasina was quoted by the Daily Star as saying.
The situation deteriorated when she unwittingly called the protesters “razakars” on July 14. Calling “razakar” is considered very offensive in Bangladesh as it is used as a euphemism for those who aided the Pakistan Army in 1971. It became a rallying cry of protesters and when they were reportedly joined by Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat, their aggression aggravated, forcing the security forces to wield batons and bullets.
Jamaat’s student body is tipped to be funded by the Pakistan’s Army intelligence ISI to destabilise the Sheikh Hasina government. The role of West-backed non-government organisations in the current crisis is also being tracked by the Hasina government. As many as 1,445 foreign-funded NGOs became active in Bangladesh in recent 16 years. Around 90 of them lost their registration due to “misuse of foreign funds and patronising militancy” activities.
Even though normalcy has thankfully begun to return and clashes are being reported least, Bangladesh, due to revengeful political opportunism of the BNP-Jamaat mobsters, was on the cusp of a civil war that has been averted, for now.