A video circulating ahead of the first anniversary of protests that culminated in the ouster of Bangladesh’s former leader Sheikh Hasina shows a fire station damaged by an earthquake in Myanmar, contrary to posts claiming it shows the result of corruption by the overthrown government. Similar images of the fire house, in the central Myanmar city of Sagaing, were shared in local news reports after the devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake in late March 2025.
“The contractor says the funds for construction ran out after everyone took their bribes. I thought about it today after seeing this government building,” reads part of the Bengali-language caption of a Facebook video posted on May 28, 2025.
“Bribe-taking officials are getting frustrated as the avenues for corruption are narrowing.”
The video shows a partially collapsed fire station, with the building crushing fire engines that were parked underneath.
Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured on June 30, 2025, with a red X added by AFP
The short video was also shared in similar Facebook posts ahead of the one year anniversary of student-launched protests that culminated weeks later in the overthrow of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s government (archived link).
Up to 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024 when Hasina’s government launched a brutal campaign to silence the protesters, according to the United Nations (archived link).
The country has started trials of senior figures from Hasina’s government — a key demand of several political parties now jostling for power as the South Asian nation awaits elections that the interim government has vowed will take place before June 2026.
A tribunal in Dhaka has issued arrest warrants for Hasina, and the interim government has formally requested her extradition from India — where she fled after being toppled — several times.
The video circulating online, however, was not filmed in Bangladesh and is unrelated to allegations of graft under Hasina’s rule.
Myanmar quake damage
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared clip led to a YouTube video posted on May 24 by a channel called “2025 Sagaing Earthquake Archive” (archived link).
The video is titled, “Damage To Sagaing Fire Station, Sagaing, Myanmar”.
The city of Sagaing was less than 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the epicentre of a devastating 7.7-magnitude quake that struck Myanmar on March 28, killing nearly 3,800 people and destroying swathes of homes and businesses (archived link).
Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared clip (left) and the YouTube video (right)
A subsequent keyword search found a similar image of the quake-damaged fire station in articles from Myanmar news outlet Irrawaddy and the BBC that were published in March (archived here and here).
An official Facebook page for the Sagaing fire district also posted the same photo on April 15 (archived link).
The falsely shared clip also matches a Google Maps photo of the Sagaing fire station taken in December 2020 (archived link).
AFP has debunked other false claims stemming from the unrest in Bangladesh here.
July 2, 2025 The headline of this story was updated to state the posts shared a video, not a photo
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