Misinformation around the Rohingya crisis is not a recent phenomenon; false narratives frequently begin in Myanmar and Bangladesh, cross borders, and influence public opinion across South Asia. Images and footage from refugee camps in Bangladesh and conflict areas in Myanmar are reused in anti-immigrant rhetoric and state propaganda to create a false sense of authenticity, spread fear, and strengthen prevailing biases against stateless Muslim refugees.
The Rohingya crisis is not only unfolding on the ground but also in the digital sphere, where misinformation travels faster than truth. A recent study traces how disinformation, propaganda, and hate campaigns migrate across borders — from Myanmar to Bangladesh, India, and beyond — transforming humanitarian suffering into scrutinized fiction. At the heart of this process lies a structural shift: the Rohingya are recast from victims of violence into perceived threats, a discursive framing that legitimizes exclusion and hostility. With little capacity to defend themselves in the digital age, the stateless Rohingya become doubly silenced — by displacement and by distortion.
Most significantly, this study identifies over 20 fact-checked reports on anti-immigrant disinformation targeting the Rohingya that have circulated widely on Indian social media and even in some news outlets. These fact-checks, conducted by Indian fact-checking organizations between 2017 and 2025, reveal how the Rohingya identity is wrongly painted as a source of violence or demographic threat, fueled by communal language and misleading media. These false narratives typically frame Rohingya refugees as criminals, terrorists, or a demographic “threat” — often using doctored images or videos, misleading captions, and outright fabrication.
Why is anti-immigrant disinformation frequent in India?
In India, a sizeable undocumented Rohingya refugee population, pre-existing anti-Muslim narratives, partisan media amplification, and highly connected social platforms explain why transnational misinformation about the Rohingya is particularly frequent and potent.
Since 2012, successive waves of Rohingya refugees — estimated between 20,000 and 40,000 — have entered India and live largely without legal recognition in Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, New Delhi, and other states. Hindu-nationalist discourse portrays Rohingya Muslims as disloyal outsiders, casting the Rohingya both as security threats and as agents of “demographic jihad.”
Hashtags like #SendRohingyasBack trended on networks such as Republic and Times Now, while senior government officials labeled Rohingya refugees “illegal immigrants” and national security threats. Hindu-nationalist groups exploit refugee vulnerability to mobilize majoritarian sentiments, using misinformation as a tool to demonstrate “toughness on illegal immigration.” The Rohingya thus become a malleable “other” in domestic political contests.
Cross-border misinformation targeting Rohingyas
Misinformation about the Rohingya often originates in Myanmar and Bangladesh, then migrates into India via shared language networks and diaspora media channels. Images and videos drawn from Bangladeshi refugee camps and Myanmar conflict zones are repurposed in anti-immigrant and state propaganda to lend false authenticity, evoke fear, and reinforce existing prejudices against Muslim refugees.
For example, WhatsApp forwards claimed “Rohingya Muslim” gangs were prowling at night to abduct or kill children. Another viral video, staged with actors, was shared with text like “These are Rohingya Muslims… look how they are eating Hindus.” Fact-checkers showed these were completely unrelated clips; the cannibal video was clearly staged in Hindi, not filmed in Myanmar. A dozen distinct hate plots, like kidnappings, lynchings, and more, have been falsely ascribed to the Rohingya — all using sensational communal language and fake visuals.
This study identifies at least five viral items: misuse of old images and videos with a false Indian context, where the location or timing was altered. For instance, a video of a Rohingya refugee camp fire in Bangladesh (March 2021) was circulated as evidence of the Tripura riots. In another case, Bangladeshi police footage of a Rohingya man detained near Cox’s Bazar was shared with the caption “caught stealing from a Hindu household in India.” More generally, images of Rohingya children and families from Myanmar and Bangladesh have been circulated with fabricated captions.
Nearly all misinformation exploits their religious identity, repeatedly highlighting “Muslim” versus “Hindu” in sensational ways. For example, #JaagoHinduJaago slogans, explicit references to Rohingya as Muslim aliens.
Many claims stress that Rohingya Muslims are attacking innocent Hindus — even when the footage shows something else. Rumors also reuse standard anti-Muslim templates like gang kidnapping stories, child rape narratives, by simply inserting “Rohingya” as the culprit. Indian actors repurpose these narratives to suit local communal agendas, creating a feedback loop where transnational content reinforces domestic Islamophobia.
Misinformation often comes from a small cluster of habitual pages and accounts. Several fact-checking campaigns note that the contents originate from politically aligned networks and are amplified by WhatsApp and Telegram forwards. For example, after a false story about an Indian government tax briefing went viral, it was traced to popular social media pages aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s ruling conservative political party. These underscore that the misinformation is systematic: not just a few isolated lies but a steady stream of new posts.
Analysis of voiceless discourse on refugees in the digital realm
The Rohingya crisis has been steadily reworked in the digital realm, where disinformation, online hate campaigns, and politically driven narratives interact to produce a new, hostile public reality. At the same time, partisan broadcasters, political actors, and sympathetic social media networks amplify these reframed visuals and claims, lending them an aura of authority that belies their inaccuracy.
Crucially, Rohingya refugees themselves have virtually no voice in this discourse. With no media platform or political representation, they cannot correct these rumors. In effect, the refugees are silenced twice: already stateless, they become censored online and blamed for social problems.
The covert circulation of anti-immigrant narratives using digital spaces operates as a deliberate technology of fear: by repurposing emotionally powerful visuals and selectively recycling statistics, actors convert compassion into anxiety and then into policy pressure.
State actors and partisan media amplify decontextualized visuals to bolster narratives of “illegal immigration” and “national security.” This hate propaganda not only incites hostility but also deepens the refugees’ digital marginalization.
Global digital governance concerns
Misinformation targeting Rohingya across South Asia reflects a broader failure in digital governance for refugees. UNHCR and other agencies warn that unchecked hate speech online has real-world consequences. For example, a 2018 UN mission found that Facebook-driven hate speech helped spark the Rakhine violence in Myanmar.
In this regional context, platforms and governments have done little to counter narratives of refugee victimhood. UN observers emphasize the need for stronger “guardrails and safety policies” on social media to protect displaced people. In India, despite IT rules and fact-check initiatives, these Rohingya hoaxes continue unimpeded, highlighting gaps in content moderation and media literacy.
Taken together, these dynamics show that misinformation about the Rohingya is not an incidental media problem but a structural process that transforms humanitarian reality into securitized fiction. Combating it, therefore, requires more than debunking: it demands media accountability that restrains amplification, platform interventions that slow the circulation of decontextualized visuals, and regional fact-checking collaborations that trace and neutralize transnational flows of deceptive imagery and narrative. Only by addressing the discursive, policy, and technological dimensions in parallel can the cycle that turns statelessness into digital voicelessness be interrupted.
Disclaimer: The study mentioned in the article has been published by the author on ResearchGate.
