Protests and violent clashes broke out in several cities after recently on Twitter ‘Bangladesh…Government decided to hike petrol prices by 51 per cent and diesel prices by 42 per cent from midnight. Huge queues have been reported at petrol stations across Bangladesh…’ a video went viral. The news agency Reuters verified the authenticity of the video and said in a report that the video is from 2013, not 2022.
Social media users discussing the August fuel price hike protests in Bangladesh mistakenly shared unrelated footage from 2013 when it was actually from 2022, according to a Reuters Fact Check report.
Video posted on August 7 by a Twitter account named Wallstreet Silver showed people burning things in the streets, throwing explosives and police firing tear gas to quell them.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1556083741830832130?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The video has received thousands of likes and shares.
The video was also shared on Facebook using the same caption from an ID named Joydeep Dutta.
The Reuters report also said that the government of Bangladesh increased the price of fuel oil by almost 50 percent on August 6. The move will reduce the country’s subsidy burden but put more pressure on inflation. Where the country’s inflation has already gone over 7 percent.
The South Asian country’s $416 billion economy has been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies for years. But rising fuel and food prices due to the Russia-Ukraine war have inflated the country’s import costs, forcing the government to seek loans from global institutions, including the International Monetary Fund. Recently, the price of petrol increased by 51.2 percent to Tk 130 per liter, 95-octane price increased by 51.7 percent to Tk 135 and diesel and kerosene price increased by 42.5 percent to Tk 114.
The report added, however, that the video was not related to the 2022 protests. The video is originally a footage of the Hefazat Islam movement on May 6, 2013. At that time, at least 20 Bangladeshis were killed in clashes between the police and radical Islamists demanding religious reform.
This report was prepared by Reuters’ Fact Check team.