Old Nigerian video circulated with claim of militants trying to seize hill area in Bangladesh
Following recent reports of clashes and gunfire in Sajek, a hill resort area in Rangamati district in southeastern Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts region, a video has spread on Facebook with claims that “militants” want to seize the hilly area. However, Dismislab’s fact-check found that the video is not from any recent incident in Bangladesh. It has been online since at least November 2021, when it was circulated by several Nigerian news outlets in connection with a Nigerian military operation.
The seven-second video was posted from a Facebook page named “Rangpur Edition” with the caption, “This is how the mi/li/tan/ts want to seize the hills, the ar/m/y is working hard to free the hills from mi/li/tan/ts.” (The slashes inserted within the Bangla words for “militants” and “army” in the original post appear to be a deliberate tactic to evade content-moderation filters; that formatting has been preserved here in translation.) Similar wording about an attempt to seize the hills also appears as text overlaid on the video itself. As of this report’s publication, the video had been viewed more than 1 million times, had received more than 7,000 reactions, and had been shared more than 1,000 times.
The video shows several armed individuals in military uniforms, with houses and trees visible around them. At one point, one of them is seen aiming a weapon, and the sound of gunfire is heard.
A reverse image search of several keyframes from the video, conducted to verify its authenticity, led to a video of the same scene published on YouTube on Nov 2, 2021. The title of the video, posted on a YouTube channel named “Ola TEMIDAYO”, read, “Who are these people? One of them is speaking Hausa, definitely someone from the north.”
The clothing, weapons, movements and surrounding houses of the armed individuals in the YouTube video match the scene in the video circulating on Facebook.
A further review found the same video in a report published on Nov 2, 2021, by the Nigerian news website Icons News. The report, about allegations of a military operation in Mgbowo village in the Awgu area of Nigeria’s Enugu State, contains several videos showing the same individuals. Citing local residents, the report said Nigerian soldiers entered the area on Nov 1 that year and opened fire, causing panicked residents to flee their homes.
A fact-check report on the same incident was also found, published on Nov 4, 2021, by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), a Nigerian investigative news outlet. The fact-check report includes an analysis of the video that circulated at the time, along with information gathered from interviews with local residents. The report compared the design of the military uniforms worn by the individuals in the video with the uniforms of the Nigerian Army.
Dubawa, a Nigerian fact-checking organization, also published a fact-check report on the video. A separate report by Sahara Reporters, published on Nov 2, 2021, identified the location shown in the video as a village in Nigeria’s Ebonyi State. In other words, media reports differ on the video’s exact location.
In conclusion it can be said, the video circulating on Facebook with claims of an attempt by militants to seize a hilly area is not footage of any recent incident in Bangladesh. Dismislab has previously published fact-check reports on multiple instances of disinformation circulated about the Chittagong Hill Tracts (1, 2, 3).
All social media captions, quotations, and news excerpts in this article have been translated into English from the languages in which they were originally posted or published.
