Claim: An image shows men praying while standing in water up to their chests as Bangladesh experienced floods in August 2024.
Fact: The image is from 2021 and, therefore, unrelated to the 2024 floods in Bangladesh. Taken by photographer Sharwar Hussain Apo, it was aimed at highlighting the impact of climate change.
On 24 August 2024, Facebook user ‘ऋषिकेश शुक्ला’ posted (archive) an image showing a group of men standing inside what appears to be a mosque, with their hands raised in supplication.
“इस समय बांग्लादेश में आई भयानक बाढ़ से हाल बेहाल। कर्म का फल मिलता है पर इतनी जल्दी मिलता है ये पहली बार देख रहा हूं l 🤔 सनातन धर्म की जय हो 🙏💪🚩
[At this time, the situation is in trouble due to the terrible flood in Bangladesh. First time I am seeing this, you get the fruit of your karma but you get it so quickly. 🤔 Hail Sanatan religion 🙏💪🚩]”
The caption hints at “false reports of attacks” against Hindu temples that spread online in Hindu-majority India after the government of former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed fell as a result of student-led protests that began in June 2024.
“Sanatan” is an alternative Sanskrit term for Hinduism, sometimes used to refer to the traditional version of the faith.
According to a 3 September 2024 report, over 70 people have died in the floods in Bangladesh, with concerns rising over waterborne diseases. “More than 580,000 families are still marooned in 11 flood-hit districts,” it added.
Another report from 23 August 2024 stated that the floods hit not just Bangladesh but parts of India’s northeast region as well. “Some 4.5 million people were affected by the floods in eastern Bangladesh, the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief said,” according to the publication.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check used reverse image search tools to identify the picture and found that it was taken by photographer Sharwar Hussain Apo on 8 October 2021.
According to Thomson Reuters Foundation, “Sharwar Apo is a Bangladeshi textile engineer by profession with a passion for photography. He began his journey as a documentary photographer in 2015. He is currently working on a long-term project to document the effects of river erosion caused by climate change.”
Apo also posted the image on his Instagram profile here and here.
View this post on Instagram
The image won second place prize at the International Photography Awards (IPA) 2022 in the Environmental category of Editorial pictures. Titled “Pray for mercy,” it was also named “Best of Show Curator Selection.”
The photo description on the IPA website is as follows:
“This picture was taken from Satkhira, Bangladesh, which is [a] low-lying coastal region nearby [world’s] largest mangrove forest ‘Sundarban’. People living here have to perform their prayer with the water equal to the knee or chest and the prayers should be offered with the water equal to the throat so that almighty Allah protects them from this danger. But after [a] few days, they lost this mosque due to [the] strong currents of extreme high tidal water. Although they are [not] responsible for these consequences of global warming and climate change.”
The photograph was also termed the Second Best of World Water Day Photo Contest 2022.
View this post on Instagram
The image received an honorary mention in the MonoVisions Photography Awards, where Sharwar Apo said, “My recent ongoing long-term documentary projects on climate change under the title are ‘Tears of global warming’ and ‘Tears of water’.”
Apo added that five or six years ago, people never imagined that they would lose their households, agricultural land, schools, hospitals, and mosques.
“Now, every 24 hours, they [are] submersed [in] four to five feet [of] water twice for eight to nine hours just due to increasing high tides of sea salt water and tidal surges due to the increase of global temperature and increase the sea level water of Bay of Bengal. The island’s green belt is almost disappearing and new habitable land infrastructure is being lost to the sea every day. It was [so] beyond their imagination that they [couldn’t] sleep at night to protect their kids and last household remaining from the strong current of tidal water,” he added.
A few months prior to 8 October 2021, which is when Apo took the photo, a very severe cyclonic Storm Yaas hit Bangladesh and India in May 2021.
Later, in 2023, water from a dam that broke amid the typhoon entered the Pratapnagar village in Satkhira’s Ashashuni upazila (administrative division). On 25 June 2023, the area’s Muslims “once again stood in waist-deep water and offered Friday prayers”, according to this report.
The imams, or prayer leaders, of two mosques — the Motwalli Gazi Bari Jame Masjid and Baitun Najat Jame Masjid — spoke about their predicament as floodwater consistently entered the worshipping places. The latter of the two collapsed in October 2021, according to the Bangladeshi news outlet BD24Views.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim here on Facebook, here, here, here, here, and here on X (erstwhile Twitter), here on Threads, here and here on YouTube, and here, here, and here on LinkedIn.
Conclusion: The image is unrelated to the 2024 floods in Bangladesh. It was taken by photographer Sharwar Hussain Apo on 8 October 2021 to document the effects of climate change.
Background image in cover photo: Saikiran Kesari
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