Analysts Warn of Surge in Disinformation Before Bangladesh Election

Bangladesh Grapples with Disinformation Wave Ahead of Crucial Elections

Voters in Bangladesh will elect a new government on February 12 amid what analysts describe as an unprecedented surge of disinformation, with much of it reportedly originating from neighboring India. The election marks the first since the 2024 student-led uprising that toppled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India where she has since been hosted by the Hindu-nationalist government.

The scale of online manipulation has grown so severe that Bangladeshi authorities have established a special unit to combat false content. Interim leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus highlighted the problem in January during a conversation with UN rights chief Volker Turk, describing a “flood of misinformation surrounding the elections” from both foreign and local sources.

A significant portion of the disinformation centers on alleged attacks against Bangladesh’s religious minorities. Approximately 10 percent of the country’s 170 million people are non-Muslim, primarily Hindu. Social media has seen mass posting of claims that Hindus are under attack, with the hashtag “Hindu genocide” spreading widely.

However, according to police figures released in January, only 12 percent of the 645 incidents involving minority groups in 2025 were classified as having sectarian motives. The US-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate reported tracking over 700,000 posts between August 2024 and January 2026 making claims of “Hindu genocide” on the social platform X.

“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 percent of this content originated from India, with the remainder linked to associated Hindu nationalist networks in the UK, US and Canada.”

The disinformation campaign has been amplified by sophisticated artificial intelligence technology. AFP Fact Check has debunked numerous AI-generated videos, some shared tens of thousands of times. One example featured a computer-generated woman who had supposedly lost an arm, urging viewers not to vote for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), considered a frontrunner in the upcoming elections.

Another fabricated video showed a Hindu woman claiming that people of her religion had been instructed to vote for Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s main Islamist party, or face exile to India. Of the hundreds of AI-generated videos documented by AFP on platforms including YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, very few carried AI disclaimers.

The disinformation surge follows years of repression under Hasina’s government, when political opposition was systematically crushed and dissenting voices silenced. “We are noticing a huge amount of fake information compared to other times,” said Associate Professor Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury of Dhaka-based research organization Digitally Right, noting that free AI tools have made creating sophisticated fakes much easier.

The problem has extended beyond politics into sports. In India, social media outrage from Hindu fundamentalists about a Bangladeshi cricket player in India’s domestic Indian Premier League resulted in his club canceling his contract. This controversy escalated to Bangladesh’s national team withdrawing from this month’s T20 World Cup in India.

While analysts attribute much of the disinformation to Indian sources, there is no evidence suggesting the large-scale media posts were organized by the Indian government. India’s foreign ministry has stated it has recorded a “disturbing pattern of recurring attacks on minorities” by “extremists in Bangladesh” but also emphasizes its support for “free, fair, inclusive and credible elections.”

Bangladesh’s Election Commission spokesman Md Ruhul Amin Mallik said the commission is working with Meta and has established a unit to monitor social media posts, though managing the sheer volume remains challenging. “If our team detects any content as harmful and misleading, we instantly announce it as fake information,” Mallik explained.

Election expert Jasmine Tuli, a former election commission official, warned that AI-generated images pose a particular risk in Bangladesh. While smartphone penetration is high—over 80 percent in urban households and nearly 70 percent in rural areas—many citizens are still relatively new to digital technology.

“It is a big threat for a country like Bangladesh, since people don’t have much awareness to check the information,” Tuli noted. “Due to AI-generated fake visuals, voters get misguided in their decision.”