A Reuters photo of Sri Lankan protesters lying on a bed at the island’s presidential residence in July 2022 has been shared hundreds of times in posts falsely claiming to show protesters at the palace of Bangladesh’s former prime minister. Sheikh Hasina after she fled to India. A protester from Bangladesh was filmed separately sitting on a bed in Hasina’s residence on August 5, 2024, as her 15 years in power came to an end.
“Scenes from Sheikh Hasina’s bedroom,” read an English-language Facebook post published on August 5. The post has been shared more than 600 times.
Former Prime Minister Hasina once helped save Bangladesh from military rule, but her long reign came to an abrupt end on August 5 when protesters stormed her palace in Dhaka.
AFP footage shows a protester sitting on a bed in the former prime minister’s residence, but the footage shared in the report does not show the incident.
Similar fake news was shared in Pakistan on social media site X; and here and here on Instagram. The same claim was shared in neighboring India on Facebook here and here.
Hasina’s 15 consecutive years in power have been marked by an economic renaissance, but also by mass arrests of political opponents and human rights sanctions against her security forces.
The protests in Bangladesh began in July with university student-led rallies against the government’s quota policy, quickly turning deadly and demanding her resignation.
Protests in Sri Lanka
A reverse Google search for the photo turned up a Reuters article titled, “Sri Lankan protesters cook, swim and sleep in presidential palace” which showed the photo (archived link).
The photo caption reads: “Protesters sleep on President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s bed at the president’s house, a day after protesters entered the building after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled due to the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, July 10, 2022.”
On July 9, 2022, hundreds of people flooded the presidential palace in Colombo, marking the end of months of public discontent over the island’s crippling economic crisis.
Former President Rajapaksa had fled moments earlier, aided by troops who fired into the air to free him.
Some of the audience took turns sitting on Rajapaksa’s king-size bed and the comfortable couches.
Below is a screenshot of the image in the fake message (left) and the Reuters photo (right):
The English-language Indian newspaper Hindustan Times also published the photo in a report on the protests in Sri Lanka (archived link).
