Friday, August 31, 2018

Propaganda in Myanmar

 A new book on the Rohingya crisis authored by Myanmar’s army’s department of public relations and psychological warfare, shows a photo of A man standing over two bodies, wielding a farming tool. “Bengalis killed local ethnics brutally”, reads the caption. The photograph was actually taken during Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war, when hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis were killed by Pakistani troops.

Reuters found that two of the photos originally were taken in Bangladesh and Tanzania. A third was falsely labeled as depicting Rohingya entering Myanmar from Bangladesh, when in reality it showed migrants leaving the country.

An image of Hutu refugees taken in 1996 following the violence in Rwandaas been altered with the caption falsely describing the subjects as Bengalis who have “intruded” into Myanmar after the British colonial occupation of lower Myanmar. 

Another photo depicting Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, who were trying to flee Myanmar, after their boat was seized by Myanmar’s navy, near Yangon, in 2015 appears in the Myanmar army’s new book on the Rohingya. Its caption falsely says the image shows Bengalis entering Myanmar by boat. 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-photos-exclusive/exclusive-fake-photos-in-myanmar-armys-true-news-book-on-the-rohingya-crisis-idUSKCN1LF2LB

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