Not Tarique Rahman, Khaleda Zia's remarks were about Ershad
A video claiming to show Begum Khaleda Zia’s remarks about Prime Minister Tarique Rahman was recently circulated on the social media platform Facebook. However, Dismislab’s fact-check has found that the video is edited. It splices together portions of remarks from two different points in time. In the video, Khaleda Zia was, in fact, speaking about former president Hussain Muhammad Ershad, not about Tarique Rahman.
A Facebook page named Bangladesh 2.0 posted a 29-second video on August 30. In the video, former prime minister Khaleda Zia is heard saying, “You all know Tarique Rahman well. There’s discord with his wife too. His wife wants power, he wants power too. However much you say that a movement… it wasn’t possible to carry out a movement in Dhaka in that way. There’s discord within the family here too… You all know Tarique Rahman well. There’s discord with his wife too. His wife wants power, he wants power too.”
The post’s caption read, “What did Khaleda Zia say about Tarique Rahman! So is Tarique Rahman power-hungry? Has he really come to power by giving a written pledge to India? Why wasn’t it possible to carry out the movement in Dhaka? Can anyone properly explain the full meaning of this?”
As of the publication of this report, the video had been viewed more than 389,000 times and shared more than 3,000 times. In the comments, one person wrote, “I think the deep state and Tarique Rahman together are killing Khaleda Zia.” Another wrote, “This could be an AI voice because brother Tarique Rahman seems quite bound in love to his wife.”
A relevant keyword search found a video published on a YouTube channel named “Tarique Rahman” on November 4, 2015. The caption accompanying this 1-hour-12-minute-51-second video reads, “Begum Khaleda Zia’s speech. Park Plaza, London. November 1, 2025.”
A keyword search found a two-part video (1, 2) on the verified YouTube channel of “Bangladesh Jatiyatabadi Dal BNP” regarding Deshnetri Begum Khaleda Zia’s speech in London on November 1, 2015. In the first part, published on November 4, 2015, at the 25-minute-30-second mark, referencing the 2014 election, she says, “This Ershad did not participate at first. But Ershad withdrew his seat from Rangpur. He wanted to do it from Dhaka, but he was forcibly prevented from doing so. He did not want to participate along with…at CMH. There’s discord within the family here too. You all know him well. There’s discord with his wife too. His wife wants power, he wants power too.”
At the 4-minute-44-second mark of the second part of the video, Khaleda Zia is heard saying, “However much you say that movement, movement… it wasn’t possible to carry it out in Dhaka in that way. But what a movement occurred in the villages — not even during independence, during the Liberation War, was there such a movement.”
In other words, the video was edited by substituting Hussain Muhammad Ershad’s name with Tarique Rahman in Khaleda Zia’s remarks, and by joining together two separate parts of the video, and was then circulated with a false claim.
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.
