DISINFO: USAID and Soros fomented a coup in Bangladesh in 2024
SUMMARY
In August 2024, a coup against Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina was allegedly fomented by USAID, IRI, and Soros-linked groups. Her successor, Muhammad Yunus, is a known Clinton and Soros ally. According to The Grayzone, US taxpayer money funded rappers, transgender activists, and LGBT initiatives to create a 'power shift'.
RESPONSE
The allegation is false, aiming to exploit the Trump Administration’s plans to close USAID in order to promote a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative framing popular protests as Western-sponsored ‘colour revolutions’ and attacking George Soros, a frequent target of disinformation. The goal of this narrative is to portray all international aid and cooperation coming from Western countries as destabilisation tools and plots.
This claim is based on a discredited article by the notoriously unreliable US outlet The Grayzone, itself based on a supposed document of the International Republican Institute (IRI) which had been doctored to include several sentences about training transgender people, artists and other activists that “would cooperate with IRI to destabilise Bangladesh’s politics.” The allegation was immediately debunked by Bangladeshi media. The Dhaka Tribune contacted IRI, who confirmed that the original document did not contain these sentences. Nothing of the remaining elements of the IRI budget report point to anything else than legitimate international aid to development and cultural projects. In fact, neither USAID nor George Soros are mentioned in any version of the report.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that USAID attempted a coup in Georgia in 2024, that the West wants to subjugate the Serbian president with colour revolution tools, that unrest in Kazakhstan is a conspiracy orchestrated from abroad, or that the West arranges puppet governments through colour revolutions.