Video of union cancellation protest spreads with claim of Chhatra League strike
A video of a railway blockade has spread on Facebook as footage of a strike called by the banned Chhatra League, the student wing of the Awami League, whose activities have also been banned. However, Dismislab’s fact-check found the claim to be false. The video shows local residents blocking a railway line in Brahmanbaria, a district in eastern Bangladesh, on Nov 8 to protest a change in administrative boundaries.
The 26-second video was recently posted from a Facebook profile named “Gazipur District Jubo League Branch”. (Jubo League is the youth wing of the Awami League.) The post read, “Our strike program and hartal [general strike] underway Joy Bangla Joy Bangabandhu.. ✊”. (“Joy Bangla” means “Victory to Bangla,” and “Bangabandhu” is the title of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding leader.)
As of this report’s publication, the video had been posted with the same claim from more than 230 accounts on Facebook alone.
The video shows a railway line blocked with wooden sleepers laid across the tracks. Several people are seated there. Children and several others are seen standing around them. Houses, trees and a signboard are also visible beside the railway line.
A reverse image search turned up a video of the same scene on a Facebook page named “Upakul Express”. The post, published at 9:55am on Nov 8, read, “Since morning, Akhaura Kodda Cabin railway blockade, train movement temporarily suspended.” The post also said train services on several routes, including Dhaka-Sylhet and Dhaka-Chattogram, were suspended.
The wooden sleepers placed on the railway line, a child in red clothing, a person sitting on the tracks and the surrounding houses in the Upakul Express video match the scene in the video circulated with the claim of a Chhatra League strike.
A search using relevant keywords also turned up another video, published on Nov 8 on the YouTube channel of Jamuna TV. The video, titled “Railway blocked with tree trunks in Brahmanbaria,” shows the same scene. Details of the blockade were also found in a report published on Jamuna TV’s website. The report said local residents blocked the railway line and road in Akhaura, Brahmanbaria, to protest the cancellation of the newly formed “Borishol” union and a proposal to create a new upazila. (A union is the smallest rural administrative unit in Bangladesh, and an upazila is a sub-district.) The program began on the morning of Nov 8 at the Akhaura bypass railway cabin area.
According to the report, a new union named “Borishol” was formed in May this year, comprising six villages of Basudev union in Brahmanbaria Sadar upazila. It was later attached to Akhaura upazila. A gazette (official government notification) on this was published on June 4. Local residents had been protesting the decision from the start.
Resentment among locals flared again recently when a proposal was made to form a new upazila named “Borishol” from several areas, including Basudev, Sultanpur and Ramrail unions. The railway and road blockade was held in protest.
The same incident was also reported on Nov 8 in a report by the news agency United News of Bangladesh (UNB). The report said local residents blocked the railway line by placing unused wooden sleepers on it in the Kodda Cabin area of Brahmanbaria Sadar upazila. According to the UNB report, train services on the Dhaka-Chattogram and Dhaka-Sylhet routes resumed after being suspended for about five hours.
In other words, the video circulated on Facebook as footage of a strike program by the Chhatra League is not from any program of that organization. It shows local residents blocking a railway line in the Kodda area of Brahmanbaria on Nov 8 to protest a change in administrative boundaries.
It is worth noting that the banned Bangladesh Chhatra League called a nationwide strike on Nov 10. A report published by Bangla Tribune on Nov 10 said traffic in the capital remained normal despite the strike. However, on the evening of Nov 9, cocktail explosions (crude homemade bombs, known locally as “cocktails”) and bus arsons took place at various locations in the capital.
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.
