Politics
‘Flood’ of disinformation ahead of Bangladesh election
Voters in Bangladesh elect a new government on February 12, but analysts warn their choice is threatened by a coordinated surge of disinformation, much of which originates from neighbouring India.
The Muslim-majority nation of around 170 million people is preparing for its first election since a 2024 student-led uprising toppled Sheikh Hasina — who fled to neighbouring India, where she has been hosted since by the Hindu-nationalist government.
Authorities say the scale of online manipulation — including sophisticated AI-generated images — has become so severe that a special unit has been created to curb false content.
Interim leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said in January that there had been a “flood of misinformation surrounding the elections” when he called UN rights chief Volker Turk seeking help.
“It is coming from both foreign media and local sources,” he said.
Much of that centres around claims of attacks against Bangladesh’s minorities — around 10% of Bangladesh’s population is non-Muslim, most of them Hindu.
That has seen a mass posting of claims online that Hindus are under attack, using the hashtag “Hindu genocide”.
According to police figures released in January, out of 645 incidents involving members of minority groups in 2025 — only 12% were classified as having a sectarian motive.
‘Coordinated Indian disinformation’
The US-based Centre for the Study of Organised Hate said it had tracked more than 700,000 posts — generated by more than 170,000 accounts on X, that made claims of a “Hindu genocide” between August 2024 and January 2026.
“We have tracked coordinated Indian disinformation online, falsely alleging large-scale violence against Hindus in Bangladesh,” said Raqib Naik, head of the think tank.
“More than 90% of this content originated from India, with the remainder linked to associated Hindu nationalist networks in the UK, US, and Canada,” he told AFP.
Examples debunked by AFP Fact Check, some of them shared tens of thousands of times, include an AI-created video of a woman who had lost her arm, appealing not to vote for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), seen by many as a frontrunner.
In another computer-generated video, a Hindu woman alleges that people who follow the same religion have been told to vote for Jamaat-e-Islami, or they will be exiled to India.
Of the hundreds of AI-generated videos documented by AFP Fact Check teams on social media platforms — YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram — few are marked with an AI disclaimer.
The surge has also come after years of repression under Hasina, when opposition was crushed and outspoken voices silenced.
“We are noticing a huge amount of fake information compared to other times,” said Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury, head of the Dhaka-based research organisation Digitally Right, saying free AI tools made creating sophisticated fakes easier.
In another AI-generated video, Bangladeshis appear to praise Hasina — now a fugitive who was sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity.
In India, social media outrage by Hindu fundamentalists about the lone Bangladeshi cricket player in India’s domestic IPL league resulted in his club cancelling his contract — a furore that escalated to Bangladesh’s national team pulling out of this month’s T20 World Cup in India.
But while analysts say much of the disinformation originates from India, there is no evidence that the large-scale media posts were organised by the government.
New Delhi’s foreign ministry says they have recorded a “disturbing pattern of recurring attacks on minorities” by “extremists in Bangladesh”, but also emphasise they have “consistently reiterated our position in favour of free, fair, inclusive and credible elections”.
‘Big threat’
Bangladesh Election Commission spokesman Md Ruhul Amin Mallik said they were working with Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and set up a unit to monitor social media posts — but coping with the sheer volume online is a never-ending task.
“If our team detects any content as harmful and misleading, we instantly announce it as fake information,” Mallik said.
Election expert Jasmine Tuli, a former election commission official, said that AI-generated images carried an extra risk for Bangladesh.
More than 80% of urban households have at least one smartphone, and nearly 70% of rural areas, according to government statistics — but many people are still relatively new to the technology.
“It is a big threat for a country like Bangladesh, since people don’t have much awareness to check the information,” Tuli said.
“Due to AI-generated fake visuals, voters get misguided in their decision.”
DUBAI: Dubai Police have seized several motorbikes after groups of young riders were reported performing dangerous stunts and causing disturbance in residential neighbourhoods following iftar during Ramadan.
Authorities said residents complained about loud noise, reckless riding and youths using motorbikes and quad bikes to carry out risky manoeuvres on public roads.
Police summoned the parents of the minors involved and took legal action, stressing that such behaviour poses a serious risk not only to the riders themselves but also to other road users and pedestrians.
“Reckless driving and stunts endanger lives and disturb community safety,” Dubai Police said, urging the public to report similar violations through the 901 helpline or via the Dubai Police mobile app.
A video shared by Dubai Police on social media showed some of the confiscated bikes and officers addressing the issue as part of ongoing efforts to ensure road safety during the holy month.
- Canadian PM to address finance leaders before meeting Indian PM.
- Carney wants more than double two-way trade with India by 2030.
- India hopes Canada to support to expand nuclear power capacity.
Canada PM begins key India visit, seeking to boost trade
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney landed in India on Friday for a visit he hopes would reset ties and double trade, offsetting the damage from his country’s fracturing relations with the United States.
Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi of orchestrating a deadly campaign against Sikh activists in Canada.
He arrived in the financial hub of Mumbai, where he is expected to address business leaders before travelling to the capital and meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, the final day of his visit.
Indian broadcasters showed a police convoy as Carney was whisked through Mumbai.
Carney’s office said discussions would focus on “ambitious new partnerships in trade, energy, technology and artificial intelligence (AI), talent and culture, and defence”.
Last year, the two countries agreed to resume negotiations on a proposed free-trade agreement.
Carney has said he wanted to more than double two-way trade with India by 2030, eyeing an annual target of $51 billion.
Before Carney took office last year, Ottawa accused Modi’s government of direct involvement in the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a naturalised Canadian citizen who was part of a fringe group that advocated for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan.
Khalistan members have been blamed for the assassination of an Indian prime minister and the bombing of a passenger jet.
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government further alleged India had directed a campaign of intimidation against Sikh activists across Canada.
India has repeatedly dismissed the allegations, which sent diplomatic relations into freefall, with both nations expelling a string of top diplomats in 2024.
Ties improved after Carney took office in March 2025, and envoys have since been restored.
Asked whether Canadian concerns about transnational repression would feature at the New Delhi talks, Foreign Minister Anita Anand told reporters: “That is always at the forefront of our minds.”
An Indian court acquitted the former chief minister of the capital Delhi on Friday in a long-running corruption probe the man had called a “political conspiracy” by the ruling party.
Opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal was Delhi’s chief minister before losing elections in 2025 in the midst of the judicial proceedings.
Kejriwal, 57, who spent several months in jail after he was arrested in March 2024 on accusations that his administration received kickbacks from the allocation of liquor licenses, wept as he left court.
“Truth has won,” Kejriwal told reporters after the verdict, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of using a “political conspiracy” to finish AAP.
On Friday, a Delhi court cleared him, his former deputy Manish Sisodia and 21 others of all charges.
A key opponent to Modi, he had consistently denied wrongdoing.
Rekha Gupta, a member of Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, was elected as chief minister of the sprawling megacity of more than 30 million people in February 2025.
Kejriwal began his career as a tax collector but quit his civil service job to become an anti-corruption crusader, bringing him national fame.
Several of Modi’s opponents have faced criminal investigation or trial in recent years, including two state chief ministers.
In August 2025, the government introduced a bill to remove politicians if they are arrested and detained for 30 days, which opponents called a “chilling” bid to crush constitutional safeguards.
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