A Reuters photo of Sri Lankan protesters lounging on a bed at the island nation’s presidential residence in July 2022 has been reshared hundreds of times in posts falsely claiming it shows demonstrators at the palace of former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina after she fled to India. A Bangladesh protester was separately filmed sitting on a bed in Hasina’s residence on August 5, 2024 as her 15 years in power came to an end.
“Scenes from Sheikh Hasina’s bedroom,” read an English-language post on Facebook published on August 5. It has been shared more than 600 times.
Former prime minister Hasina once helped rescue Bangladesh from military rule but her long rule came to a sudden end on August 5 as protesters stormed her palace in Dhaka.
AFP footage shows one demonstrator sitting on a bed in the former prime minister’s residence, however, the image shared in the post does not show the incident.
Similar false posts were shared in Pakistan on social media site X; and here and here on Instagram. The same claim was shared in neighbouring India on Facebook here and here.
Hasina’s 15 consecutive years in power were marked by an economic rebirth but also by the mass arrest of political opponents and human rights sanctions against her security forces.
Protests in Bangladesh began in July with rallies led by university students against civil service job quotas but soon escalated into deadly unrest and demands that she step down.
Sri Lanka protests
Reverse image searches of the photo on Google found a Reuters article titled, “Sri Lankan protesters cook, swim, sleep in presidential palace” where the picture was featured (archived link).
The photo’s description read, “Demonstrators sleep on President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s bed at the President’s house, the day after demonstrators entered the building, after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled, amid the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka July 10, 2022.”
The presidential palace in Colombo was overrun by hundreds of people on July 9, 2022, capping months of public discontent over the island nation’s crippling economic crisis.
Former president Rajapaksa had fled just moments earlier, assisted by troops who fired into the air to clear his escape.
Some of the crowd took turns lounging on Rajapaksa’s king-size bed and the comfortable sofas.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the false post (left) and the Reuters photo (right):
India’s English-language newspaper Hindustan Times also published the photo in a report about the Sri Lanka protests (archived link).
