Students In Bangladesh Are Deleting Their Posts About The Protests Because They’re Scared Of Reprisals

Huge anti-government protests in Bangladesh that lasted more than a week have come to an end after the authorities cracked down on student demonstrations both online and on the streets, with dozens of people detained, journalists attacked, and photographers arrested for speaking out.

Students who had been part of the demonstrations told BuzzFeed News they were terrified of arrest following the protests and were deleting any messages of support they’d posted online, while a photojournalist who was badly injured covering the demonstrations described the situation as chaos and said anyone with a camera had become a target.

Much of this fear rests on a loosely worded law passed in Bangladesh 12 years ago — widely referred to as Section 57 — that allows for the prosecution of anyone posting material online that the authorities determine could “deprave and corrupt” its audience, cause a “deterioration in law and order,” or prejudice “the image of the state or a person.”

A critical Human Rights Watch report earlier this year labeled the law “draconian.” And a 2018 Freedom House report, detailing freedom of speech, noted several activists and writers had been detained under the law, as “censorship of digital content and surveillance … become increasingly common.”

The students and the photojournalist BuzzFeed News spoke to referenced Section 57 as a major factor in the climate of fear: As a result, none were willing to be identified and only spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The protests were initially sparked by the deaths of two teenagers hit by an out-of-control bus but evolved into a huge street movement against government corruption, and saw thousands expressing their rage at the country’s notoriously dangerous roads and ineffective authorities.

Protesters, many of them teenagers, marched along Dhaka’s busiest roads for eight days, but the demonstrations were marred by allegations of violence. Videos and photos shared online purportedly showed members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), a student political movement linked to the ruling Awami political party, attacking both students and journalists at the marches.

Rumors swirled that several students had been killed and four women raped at the protests. While a female journalist was reportedly molested, there is no evidence that any women were raped by anti-demonstration groups during the protests. But while both claims went viral, with social media accounts sharing images and similar messages, no one can substantiate them and there is no official record of any deaths or sexual assaults taking place.

“The situation here is insanely bad,” Azwaad, a student who asked to be identified only by his first name because of fear of reprisals, told BuzzFeed News. “I’m very tense and scared.”

The 19-year-old, who is finishing his studies before university, said via WhatsApp that he was among those protesting near Bashundhara Gate, a point along one of the main roads in Dhaka, on Monday when violence broke out. “Then pro-government goons (Chhatra league) started attacking us from one side of the road, and police officers started shooting at us; rubber bullets and real bullets, tear gas.”

Azwaad said the protesters scattered, with some running for shelter in the university buildings nearby, but he ended up in a small building off to the side. When he made a break to escape, “they attacked us with bamboo sticks, [so] we all ran with our lives, got away with minor bruises.”

In the aftermath of this violence, Bangladesh’s Daily Star newspaper reported that although scores of students were arrested on Aug. 7 for charges including vandalism, no individuals linked to the ruling Awami party have been detained — or even questioned.

Speaking to the newspaper, an anonymous senior official at the Dhaka Metropolitan Police said: “Does any officer has the guts to file a case against ruling party activists unless a political decision comes to that end?”

Azwaad said a few of his friends were missing and “a lot of them are injured” after the demonstrations. “We are helpless and hopeless,” he said. “The state is doing a great job on hiding the facts and covering it up with fiction.”

He then shared a text message that he said he had received from Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs.

The message read: “No students were killed or raped in the capital’s Jigatola [a district in Dhaka]. The whole situation report by students were a hoax. Don’t get distressed by such news. Please provide information about people spreading such rumours to the police.”

But the rumors have generated enough attention inside Bangladesh for BCL’s general secretary, Golam Rabbani, in another interview with the Daily Star, to directly deny any claims of rape by his organization’s members. “Some vested quarters spread rumors of rape and murder on Facebook. Those are absolutely fabricated,” Rabbani told reporters on Sunday.

Rabbani’s comment failed to halt the growing rage online, where fake news had been going viral, often under hashtags like #WeWantJustice.

Among the accounts pushing this information were often fan pages for BTS (a seven-member South Korean boy band) with tens of thousands of followers, who started tweeting about the protests on Aug. 2. The fans, who refer to themselves as “ARMYs,” often tweet or share posts about global issues. Within days, a concerted move from these accounts saw them urging their followers to tweet about the situation in Bangladesh. Many of these tweets racked up tens of thousands of retweets, while on Instagram and Facebook the same videos and photos were screen-grabbed and shared repeatedly.

Frequently, the posts were encouraging accounts to share the news because supposedly international media outlets were not covering the story. (In fact, the BBC, the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian, and the Washington Post, among others, all covered the protests.)

In addition, accounts on Instagram and Twitter were flooding the inboxes of reporters and news organizations’ social platforms with DMs about the students’ treatment and the actions of counterprotesters. These messages often followed a similar pattern.

In the case of many of the accounts contacted by BuzzFeed News, the individuals behind them were not in Bangladesh. Repeatedly, they urged reporters to pay attention to what was happening in Dhaka, citing the alleged killings and rapes, but were unable to specify where they had first heard these rumors.