Rights groups and foreign powers, including the United States, have long raised concerns over efforts by Hasina’s government to silence criticism and stamp out political dissent.
AFP found that names forming a network of so-called experts are producing regular op-ed pieces, some posing as academics from leading global universities, some using stolen headshot photos, and others making up quotes from real analysts.
“It’s a coordinated influence operation,” said A al-Mamun, a journalism professor at Bangladesh’s University of Rajshahi. “These articles primarily promote narratives that are favourable to the current Bangladesh government.”
A surge of articles appeared online around September 2022, when Bangladesh’s foreign ministry issued a call for “good columnists” to counter negative “propaganda”.
AFP sent multiple requests for comment to top officials at Bangladesh’s foreign ministry and information ministry but received no reply. Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen told AFP he did “not have enough time” to comment.
No records
AFP said it analysed more than 700 articles published in at least 60 domestic and international news sites with bylines attributed to 35 names, all of which appeared for the first time online last year.
The articles overwhelmingly endorse narratives pushed by Dhaka, with some posted on Bangladesh government websites.
While it was not possible to prove if the 35 names investigated by AFP are real, no online presence apart from their articles could be found, none has a visible social media profile, and none has published research papers in academic journals.
At least 17 of the 35 claimed links to major Western and Asian universities but AFP’s digital verification reporters found no records for them.
Eight major universities confirmed that they had never heard of nine of the writers purportedly working for them, including the University of Delaware in the US, Canada’s University of Toronto, Switzerland’s University of Lucerne, and the National University of Singapore.
“We checked our school records and do not find his name on our rolls,” India’s Jawaharlal Nehru University said about one purported writer claiming ties.
Headshot photographs of eight of the reported columnists belong to other people, including a popular fashion influencer on Indian social media.
AFP also found examples where the same article was published using different names in English and Bengali.
Chowdhury’s photograph was taken from an Indian actor, while the University of Groningen in the Netherlands – where Chowdhury is reportedly a doctoral researcher in politics – said it has no record of her.
AFP received a response from the email address listed beneath the articles that said Chowdhury was an “alias to avoid security concerns”, but the email’s author declined to provide a real identity or explain the use of a false photograph.
‘Entirely fabricated’
Fumiko Yamada, who has had articles published in outlets including the Bangkok Post and a blog by the London School of Economics, is portrayed as a specialist in Bangladesh Studies at Australia’s University of Melbourne.
However, AFP found that there are no records of her there and that “Bangladesh Studies” is not a specific research study area.
Other articles include fake quotes from real experts.
Gerard McCarthy, a professor at the International Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands, said “entirely fabricated” quotes attributed to him were used in an article condemning “Western duplicity” towards Myanmar, written under the byline Prithwi Raj Chaturvedi.
Newspaper editors said they printed articles in good faith, after reading their academic background and seeing them published elsewhere.
“We trusted the credentials,” said Mubin S Khan, feature editor of Dhaka’s Business Standard.
He later stopped publishing them, fearing they were “mercenary writers” being pushed by “vested” interests but was shocked to learn they appeared to be fictitious.
“I should have been a little more conscious in this age of disinformation and propaganda about checking the identities of the writers,” he said.
SOURCE: AFP
This article was first published on Al Jazeera, on 7 Sep 2023
