Several social media users have shared an image of former Bangladeshi PM Begum Khaleda Zia along with an alleged quote, “I regret the continuing of massacre of Hindus & Buddhists in Bangladesh, but Bangladesh is an Islamic Nation and not Secular. Now, the Muslims are in majority here. Under the circumstances, if Hindus & Buddhists want to live safely, they should either convert to Islam or go to India.” The image also has the text ‘This is why CAA’ on it.
Twitter user @ssingapuri posted the viral image and gained close to 300 retweets.
Finally Begum Khalida Zia of Bangladesh proclaims!! If Hindus Buddhist want to live safely, either convert to Islam or move to India. How frank is that? pic.twitter.com/HqYopp8iXS
— Sandy Boy ??(Sundeep) (@ssingapuri) August 18, 2021
Several Facebook users have also posted the claim the past few years.
Alt News has received requests to fact-check this claim on our WhatsApp helpline number (+91 76000 11160). The image is labelled ‘Forwarded many times’ by WhatsApp.
FACT-CHECK
Readers should note if former Bangladeshi PM Begum Khaleda Zia had made this comment it would have been covered by regional and international media. No news outlet has reported that Zia made such a statement.
Further, Zia is associated with Bangladesh Nationalist Party. There is no party called ‘Bangla National Party’ as mentioned in the viral image.
The viral post was made by Facebook page Khabar24x7.com on July 20, 2015.
Alt News looked up the domain khabar24x7.com and found that no such website currently exists.
As per Big Domain Data, the domain was created in 2014. It was last hosted on Wix.com.
To sum it up, a false communal quote was attributed to Bangladeshi PM Begum Khaleda Zia. The quote has been circulating on right-wing websites for several years now. The oldest we could find is from May 2014. Earlier this month, Alt News reported that hoardings with fake quotes attributed to prominent Muslims appeared in UP’s Pratapgarh. We found that some of those quotes date back a decade on social media.
The post Facebook post from 2015 ascribing false quote to ex-Bangladesh PM Khaleda Zia viral appeared first on Alt News.
This post was originally published on Alt News.