Exiled author Taslima Nasrin has been declared by Facebook as "dead" for the second time in just two days apart, in an apparently coordinated cyberattack.
Her verified Facebook profile first said she passed away Tuesday (on January 18) as it mentioned she was being “memorialized” then. The problem was sorted out within hours, making the account again accessible later in the evening, but only for two days.
On Thursday morning, she again found that her Facebook account claimed her to be dead.
“Facebook just killed me. I am alive. Not even sick or bedridden or hospitalized, but Facebook memorialized my Facebook account,” she tweeted on Tuesday afternoon soon after noticing the matter, requesting the Meta authorities to restore her account.
Two hours later, she took to Twitter to express her frustration and mentioning the Meta platforms, she wrote: “I am very much alive. But you memorialized my Facebook account. What a sad news! How could you do that? Please give me back my account.”
As the news continued to spread, the controversial author tweeted: “Jihadists are celebrating my death, eating and distributing sweets, as Facebook declared I am dead and memorialized my FB account.”
In the last tweet of the day after the account was reinstated, Nasrin with a winking smiley stated: “Resurrected on Facebook.”
On both days, people visiting her profile were greeted with the following, “Remembering Taslima Nasrin. We hope people who love Taslima will find comfort in visiting her profile to remember and celebrate her life.”
Nasrin, who was forced to leave Bangladesh 27 years ago under threats from Islamist radicals, has been living in New Delhi since 2007 after Islamist fundamentalists forced the West Bengal government to pressurise her to leave Kolkata.
#Facebook killed me twice in 2 days. I am dead before i am really dead. When i will really die, people would not believe that i really died. They would treat my death as a fake death created by facebook. @facebookapp
— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) January 20, 2022
Nasrin is followed by 767,868 people on Facebook as of Friday night.
“These Islamist radicals are after me for three decades now. I am living outside Bangladesh for 27 years but they have been relentless. Facebook authorities need to make proper enquiries and see if they are being led by Islamic terror groups into taking these actions,” she told Outlook India.
“They need to improve their system. How could Facebook repeat the mistake in a matter of two days even after the first incident was widely reported in the Bengali and English-language media?” she questioned.
She added that religious fundamentalists have repeatedly reported her Facebook profile en masse, resulting in her "ban" on the social media platform on several occasions. She will be lodging a complaint with the cyber cell of the Delhi police.
“I have suffered repeated censorships, my books keep getting banned, my very existence comes under banning. Social media is my only way to express my opinion freely. Facebook needs to decide whether they want to be driven purely by number or have some ethics as well,” she said.
More atheists, bloggers face the same
Nasrin is not the only one to embrace such a bizarre situation.
The Facebook profiles of exiled atheist Bangladeshi blogger and human rights activist Asaduzzaman Noor, Dhaka-based atheist blogger Mehran Sanjana and London-based atheist and human rights activist Lopa Rahman were also seen “memorializing” them, according to Outlook India.
Even Kaniz Fatema, the wife of the exiled, atheist Bangladeshi blogger Asif Mohiuddin, also found her Facebook profile claiming her to be dead.
Sanjana has been associated with the pioneering Bengali rationalist website, Mukto-Mona, while Rahman is associated with the rationalist website, shongshoy.com.
Noor and Mohiuddin have also lost their Twitter handles on Wednesday after the accounts were "mass reported".
Mohiuddin and his wife have been living in Germany since he was stabbed in Dhaka in 2013 for his atheist writings.
On Facebook, Lopa has 123,000 followers, while Sanjana is followed by about 18,000 people, and Fatema has about 30,000 followers. Noor's verified page has more than 251,000 followers -- but the profile that has described him as dead had about 7,000 followers.
A victim's account
Asaduzzaman Noor, popularly known as Asad Noor, is hiding in India since facing life threats in Bangladesh in 2019. On January 19, he found his Facebook profile claiming him to be dead.
He wrote on the platform, from his Facebook page: “I am alive! Yet Facebook App says I am dead! Facebook is losing its dignity by giving importance to the false reports of certain Bangladeshi Islamist cybercriminals. Facebook should improve their artificial intelligence (AI) to get back the faith they have lost in the community. They should be more vigilant about the choices and calls they make.”
Talking to the Indian magazine, Noor alleged that this was the handiwork of a Bangladesh-based hacker group, which runs a Facebook page called Bangladesh Civilian Force.
On January 19, he received an email from an email ID styled as Team Khan saying that his Facebook profile was reported as belonging to a dead person because he expressed his concerns about what happened to Nasrin’s profile.
“They also sent me proof showing it was them who also reported my Twitter handle. They asked me to refrain from making comments against Islam. These people are also behind the Facebook page called Bangladesh Civilian Force, which has claimed responsibility for bringing down our Facebook profiles by reporting us as dead,” Noor said.
The Facebook page he named can only be accessed from Bangladesh.