Fact-Check: Old Visuals From Sri Lanka Falsely Linked to Bangladesh Protests

A set of visuals, showing a crowd of people enjoying themselves in a swimming pool and others relaxing on a bed, have gone viral on social media.

The claim: The visuals are being shared as ones from Bangladesh's Ganabhaban, (গণভবন), the official residence of the prime minister of Bangladesh.

(Archives of more posts linking these visuals to Bangladesh can be seen here, here, here, here, and here.)

But...?: The visuals are not from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

• They date back to July 2022 and show Sri Lankan protesters at former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's official residence, amid economic and political crises in the country.

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What is happening in Bangladesh?: After prolonged nationwide anti-quote student protests, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government was ousted from power on Monday, 5 August.

• The action against the protests have claimed over 300 lives, including at least 32 minors. However, the official number of deaths is 150.

• The country's Army announced her resignation as Hasina 'fled' the country, declaring that the military would form an interim government.

How did we find out the truth?: We used a keyword search to verify the viral video, and a reverse image search to find the truth behind the viral photograph, using Google Lens.

VISUAL ONE: VIDEO

On watching the video, we noticed that it carried BBC's logo and mentioned that it showed a crisis in Sri Lanka, where protesters had stormed the then-President Rajapaksa's residence.

We ran a relevant keyword search on YouTube with 'BBC' as a keyword, and came across similar footage uploaded on their verified channel.

Shared on 9 July 2022, the organisation reported on visuals of protesters storming former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's residence.

The part of this report seen in the viral claim starts 20 seconds into the video here.

We found similar visuals of people enjoying themselves in the swimming pool in another report by the BBC, in a report shared on 10 July 2022.

The Quint had also shared similar visuals while reporting on protesters storming the president's residence in a 2022 video.

VISUAL TWO: PHOTO

To verify the truth behind the image, we ran a reverse image search on it, using Google Lens.

• This led us to a report by news agency Reuters, which had shared the viral image as a part of a photo series on the protests in Sri Lanka.

• Published on 15 July 2022, the photo story was titled 'Sri Lankan protesters cook, swim, sleep in presidential palace'.

On scrolling down through the photo story, we found that the image had been captured on 10 July 2022.

Several Indian news organisations had also shared this image, including Hindustan Times, which had also shared it with the same context.

The Sri Lankan crisis: In 2022, Sri Lankans protested against their government, led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, after the country experienced severe economic crisis.

• The island nation had run out of foreign currency, and was struggling to import fuel and food, while also experiencing long power blackouts for months before the protests, The Quint reported.

• The protests and crisis came after the country's government defaulted on its external debt amounting to $51 billion and was regularly negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout package.

• Watch our video to better understand why it happened, here:

Conclusion: Old visuals showing Sri Lankan protesters storming the president's residence have gone viral with the false claim that they show visuals from Bangladesh.

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