When a first year Dhaka University student Tapon Roy came across a post on the facebook that can be summed up as minorities are forced to flee the country due to Awami League and that too from the mouth of a minority community leader he could not believe in his eyes, was taken aback and left in bewilderment.
Because all about life of minorities he learnt since his childhood— his parents and friends from his neighbourhood in a tiny upazila near Bogura that minorities were driven out of this country during the last tenure of BNP, Jamaat combine ruled by Khaleda Zia, then prime minister and his son Tarique Rahman.
Brought up in a minority dominated locality, he held a fair sense of idea on how the tides of state sponsored repression driven out minorities form the country, thanks to what has been described “largest pogrom against minorities between 2001 and 2006 sponsored by BNP Jamaat combine”.
But the post containing a photo superimposed of Rana Das Gupta, secretary of country’s largest minority community, with a caption “Religious and ethnic minorities are not living the country rather they are being forced to leave the country because Awami League” can be found on the facebook page of BNP’s policy magazine Road to Democracy.
Tapon earlier recalled a television report where Rana Das Gupta was seen stating “between 2001 and 2006, as many as 28,0000 incidents of attacks on minorities including rape, loot, killing and land grabbing inflicted on the community across the country”.
And he thought “Rana might have fallen prey to a targeted disinformation waged by BNP Jamaat combine that seeks to alter historic facts for political gains”.
Now when attention of Rana Das Gupta was drawn, he also expressed shock at unbridled and unchecked freedom enjoyed by BNP to spread such scale of disinformation on social media platform called facebook where he calls “lies reign supreme and for decades the same cabal of BNP Jamaat given a free ride to stoke communal violence. Another key objective is to reversal the historic facts the combine is desparate to hide and also to mislead the global audience”.
Rana described this play by BNP as a calculated disinformation to mislead the world for political advantage but he also pointed out of a “highly likely connivance between BNP Jamaat combine and those employed by Facebook to keep the platform safe from lies, communal violence and altering of history”.
Taking a dig at the latest report by Meta on Bangladesh that intends to place a curb on the flow of BNP led violence, Rana, who is also an advocate, says “ever since this digital giant started witnessing mushrooming growth in Bangladesh, it started to appease the nexus of war criminals Jamaat e Islmai that is the principal ally of BNP. But never did the platform speak about such abuses, just like the organization does not hold any accountability to the people and government of this country. ”
Within days into the report, the same platform Road to Democracy has uploaded a video story hailing Meta for the move that the party believes would stop others from sharing any content on BNP’s record of violence and corruption on the platform, a move observers say help BNP‘s effort to absolve Tarique Rahman and the party’s litany of epidemic scale of crimes even unearthed by likes of FBI.
“Alongside decade old impunity allowed by the platform for BNP Jamaat combine to use the platform for spread of political lopesided narrative including hate speech, incitement and calls for violence what exactly did not appear in responsible mainstream media, this latest report shows Meta has added to the list of spokespersons for BNP Jamaat like Road to Democray”, commented a journalist Asgar Ali.
“If you revisit the extensive usage of this platform by the BNP Jamaat combine in stoking violence on voters including liberals and minorities ahead of polls, be it 2013, 2018 or this polls, you will see the platform allowed full impunity for the perpetrators of this combine who attacked and raped minorities by circulating rumours that Jamaat leader was sighted on the moon, or a cooked up plot like minorities have made something derogatory against Islam”, added another rights activist and minority leader Nirmal Rojario drawing on his decade old observation.
Echoing the tone of Albd web team coordinator Tonmoy Ahmed, about latest report, Rana added “like Tonmoy, a large number of anti-war crimes campaigners in Bangladesh faced similar problems with facebook”
“Unless social media platform like facebook and youtube had given them access, BNP Jamaat combine would not have managed to circulate disinformation at such an epidemic scale”, he added.
