Religious tensions in Muslim-majority Bangladesh have run high in the aftermath of autocratic leader Sheikh Hasina’s toppling and its minority Hindu community has faced attacks for their perceived support of her administration. However, a video that surfaced in neighbouring India does not show a Hindu person being roasted on a spit — the footage shows a Chinese theme park’s Halloween prop from 2018.
“All Hindus and all the central and state governments of India should see with open eyes that the torture of Hindu brothers and sisters in Bangladesh has reached its peak,” read a Hindi-language X post on December 12, 2024.
It included a seven-second clip that appears to show two people being roasted on spits.
The post went on to make an appeal to Hindus to “spread” the video to “awaken” governments.
Screenshot of the false post, taken on December 21, 2024
The clip circulated online on Facebook and X posts following attacks against Hindus in Bangladesh over their perceived support for the government of Sheikh Hasina, the country’s autocratic leader who was toppled in August in a student-led revolution.
The arrest of outspoken Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, who called for the protection of Hindus, further sparked clashes between his followers and security forces in November and led to the killing of a Muslim lawyer (archived link).
However, the clip is unrelated to the unrest in Bangladesh — it shows a Halloween prop at a Chinese theme park in 2018.
Theme park Halloween event
A reverse image search on Baidu found a similar photo in a simplified Chinese Weibo post on October 19, 2018 that read “Ghost village: full of terrors, the ghosts are right by your side. Don’t come if you’re cowardly” (archived link).
Other photos in the post showed various scenes of people dressed as horror characters in a theme park.
The post also featured a location tag for the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, a theme park in southern China’s Zhuhai city (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and the photo posted by the Weibo user (right):
Screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and the photo posted by the Weibo user (right)
Keyword searches on Google using the phrase “South Sea Poison Village” seen in one of the photos in the Weibo posts led to a video on Facebook uploaded by a Macau-based lifestyle magazine on October 17, 2018, which showed similar footage of the “person” being roasted (archived link).
The post featured hashtags for “Zhuhai Chimelong Ocean Kingdom” and “Halloween”, alongside a link to an article by the magazine advertising the theme park’s Halloween event for 2018 (archived link).
The same prop can also be seen in a vlog from the theme park shared on YouTube in October 2018 (archived link).
AFP has fact-checked a series of misinformation about religious conflict since the former Bangladesh prime minister’s ouster here, here and here.
