Attacks on media personnel in Bangladesh are becoming deadlier. Credit: Khan Md Nazrul Islam/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

When it comes to media, Bangladesh boasts some impressive statistics: it has the largest number of outlets among the world’s least developed countries (LDCs), including 50 nationwide dailies, of which eight are English-language newspapers; 25 television channels; seven FM radio stations; 14 community radio channels and over 300 regional magazines published in English and Bengali.

But beneath this veneer lurks a dark reality: a near total lack of press freedom for journalists, who daily operate in a climate of fear, impunity and abuse.

Watchdogs like the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have ranked Bangladesh the world’s 19th deadliest country for media, citing political pressure, censorship, arrests, detention, torture in custody, closure of outlets and extrajudicial killings as the most salient examples of a systematic attack on the country’s fourth estate.

This South Asian nation’s transition from a string of military dictatorships to democracy in the late 1990s signaled a new era of economic development and protection of human rights, but experts like Dr. Kamal Hossain, eminent lawyer and former minister of law, foreign affairs and petroleum and minerals, told IPS the country still lacks “the rule of law.”

According to Odhikar, Bangladesh’s leading human rights watchdog, and other such advocacy organisations, as many as 21 journalists have been killed since 1992, three of them this year.

During the first half of 2013, 120 media practitioners were subjected to severe attacks and 24 received some form of threat during the course of their professional duties.

With so little for journalists to celebrate, it comes as no surprise that last month’s landmark court verdict on the murder of journalist Goutam Das – in which eight of the 10 people accused of plotting his death were handed down life sentences by the Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal – continues to echo in pressrooms around the country.

Das, who at the time of his death was the Faridpur district correspondent for the Dhaka-based Bengali daily ‘Samakaal’, wrote a series of reports in 2005 exposing corruption by local businessmen connected with the then-ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

For eight long years his family and colleagues have waited for this ruling, which “marks the first time in Bangladesh’s 42-year history that the police thoroughly investigated the murder of a journalist and arrested the perpetrators, and that a court delivered a favorable verdict,” said Manjurul Ahsan Bulbul, a prominent journalist and former head of the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists (BFUJ).

Many think the ruling has set a precedent for future cases involving journalists.

BFUJ President Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury told IPS, “We (now) expect speedy trials and justice for all pending cases. If (future) verdicts are delivered without delay… the perpetrators will not have the chance to repeat such crimes…”

The pending murder cases he refers to involve such prominent journalists as Saiful Alam Mukul, a reporter for the ‘Daily Runner’ based in the southwestern Jessore district; Manik Saha, correspondent for ‘New Age: The Outspoken Daily’ and the BBC World Service, based in the southern Khulna district; and Golam Mostafa Sarowar, senior news editor of the ‘Maasranga’ TV channel, and his wife, Mehrun Runi, a reporter for the Bengali-language ATN TV channel.

The deaths of Sarowar and Runi – who were stabbed in their rented flat in the capital, Dhaka, at around midnight on Feb. 12, 2012 – sent shock waves around the country, with thousands still reeling from the news of their untimely and tragic passing.

At the time, Home Minister Shahara Khatun declared a 48-hour deadline for arresting the couple’s killers. But a year and a half later, the culprits are still at large and angry reactions from the community – including protests organised by rights groups and students – have failed to spur the authorities into action.

Such outstanding cases cast a pall of doubt over hopes that this recent ruling signals a turn towards greater press freedom.

Widespread detention and the constant harassment of journalists in police custody have also worked to cement a feeling of fear, thereby increasing self-censorship.

Noted reporter Saleem Samad who worked for the UK-based Channel 4 TV station was arrested in October 2002 for trying to produce a documentary based on reports that Bangladesh was playing host to jihadis from Afghanistan and beyond.

The Bangladesh government charged Samad with sedition and conspiracy to defame the country. Upon his release after 50 days in prison, Samad described being brutally interrogated about his “motives” for shooting the film.

He reported being woken in the middle of the night and taken to a small cell where an army officer with a pistol in his hand would force him to disclose information.

Others have fallen victim to brutal attacks carried out by armed cadres of ruling political parties.

Abul Bashar, a local correspondent for the Bengali-language national daily ‘Janakantha’ in the central Shariatpur district, was kidnapped from his office on Jun. 19, 2003, tortured and finally abandoned on the roadside with a fractured skull and backbone.

Armed members of the Jatiyatabadi Chattra Dal (JCD), a student wing of the then ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), allegedly carried out the attack.

More recently, on Jan. 5 this year, activists belonging to the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student front of the current ruling Awami League, allegedly beat and illegally detained Reuters reporter Andrew Biraz, New Age reporter Sony Ramani, Bangla News photojournalist Harun-ar-Rashid Rubel and Prothom Alo correspondent Hasan Raja as they were photographing a bomb blast at the Dhaka University campus.

Organisations like Odhikar have strongly criticised such actions and called for an immediate lifting of the ban on three prominent TV stations – Channel One, Diganta and Islamic TV – on the grounds that they were “airing provocative programmes to whip up public sentiment.”

Odhikar also urged the government to arrest criminals involved in killing and attacking journalists.

Watchdogs like the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) have also made their concerns known through the release of situation reports on journalists’ rights and the state of media freedom in Bangladesh, citing torture, killings and detention as some of the many hurdles journalists are forced to clear before carrying out their work.

Protestors armed with bamboo sticks faced police in riot gear in Dhaka on May 4, 2013. Credit: Kajul Hazra/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, May 8 2013 (IPS)

Adding to a long list of domestic woes, including a factory collapse that left hundreds dead last month, Bangladesh is now grappling with a wave of violence that threatens to deepen the gulf between secular sections of society and religious fundamentalists.

Earlier this week at least 27 people were killed on the streets of the capital, Dhaka, as police clad in riot gear clashed with Islamic hard-liners calling for radical changes to the country’s constitution.

“We have not witnessed violence of this magnitude since the Liberation War in 1971." - Shyamal Dutta, editor of the leading Bengali newspaper ‘Bhorer Kagoj'
Sparked by a massive rally organised by the religious group Hifazat-e-Islam (Protectorate of Islam) on Sunday, May 4, the violence left hundreds injured with bullet wounds, fighting for their lives in hospitals across the city.

Chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), the nearly 100,000 demonstrators wielding bamboo sticks and banners demanded implementation of the Hifazat’s 13-point programme, which calls, among other things, for the execution of “atheists” or anyone accused of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammed.

Aware of the group’s plans, the government had requested Hifazat leaders to postpone their mass rally in light of the national tragedy that occurred on Apr. 24, when a building in the Dhaka suburb of Savar housing several factories collapsed, leaving over 800 dead.

Undeterred by a daily mounting death toll from the Rana Plaza catastrophe, the worst garment sector disaster in history, the group pushed ahead with what it called the “Dhaka Seize”, cutting off access to all six entry-points into the capital and occupying all the main thoroughfares.

Witnesses to the street battles, which carried on into Monday, say protestors vandalised buildings, torched scores of businesses and looted shops, all the while chanting anti-government slogans.

Shyamal Dutta, editor of the leading Bengali newspaper ‘Bhorer Kagoj’, described the violence as a veritable “war against the state”.

“We have not witnessed violence of this magnitude since the Liberation War in 1971,” he told IPS, referring to the bloody independence struggle that resulted in the secession of what was then East Pakistan from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, leaving at least three million dead, by the most conservative estimates.

Ever since the creation of Bangladesh as a sovereign state, this Muslim majority country of 160 million has been governed by a secular constitution.

Dutta believes Hifazat-e-Islam, an alliance of about 12 religious groups, is now seeking to dismantle the pluralism that has for years been enshrined in the constitution and “destroy the nation’s social, cultural and democratic values”.

Other demands on the group’s 13-point agenda include bans on anti-Islamic “propaganda” (in the form of social media) and the “intermingling” of men and women in public spaces, as well as mandatory religious education from primary to higher secondary levels.

Though the group claims to uphold the Islamic faith, many religious scholars like Moulana Ziaul Ahsan, president of the Bangladesh Sammilita Islamic Jote, have denounced their actions as “unconstitutional”.

Meeting violence with violence

Soon after the official rally ended late Sunday night, police tried to disperse the crowds, but activists hailing mostly from madrashas (religious schools) refused to clear the streets until the government agreed to implement a new anti-blasphemy law.

While many eyewitnesses say the protestors provoked police reprisals by throwing homemade explosives, bricks, stones and sticks, other sources claim the government must be held accountable for deploying the elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) police force and the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) with instructions to “shoot to kill”.

“I have never seen such violence before,” Kajul Hazra, a photojournalist who has 22 years of experience working in Bangladesh, told IPS, adding that over 12,000 police were dispatched to quell the riot.

“The protestors used drums of petrol to torch trees cut from islands on the streets, broke window panes and set fire to parked vehicles, banks and offices…ambulance sirens, flames and tear gas smoke filled the air of Motijheel area (Dhaka’s commercial hub),” he recalled.

Police Spokesman Masudur Rahman told the press on Monday that his men were “forced” to use “rubber bullets, tear gas and sound grenades to control the violence.”

But human rights advocates say the decision to fire on unarmed protestors amounts to a violation of democratic principles.

“They (the police) fired on the demonstrators late at night, into the darkness, which was really cruel,” Farida Akhter, a leader of the United Women’s Forum, told IPS, adding that such actions “are those of a dictator government and completely unacceptable in a democratic society.”

A visibly shaken public sees the incident as a frightening reminder of the deep divisions in the political sphere.

According to Rokeya Prachy, a prominent social activist, Hifazat enjoys the support of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), as well as the Jamat-e-Islami, whose leaders are currently being tried for war crimes allegedly committed on behalf of the West Pakistan military junta during the 1971 Liberation War against pro-independence activists.

In February and March, tens of thousands of civilians took to the streets when the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh failed to mete out the long-anticipated death penalty to former Jamat leader Abdul Quader Mollah.

Hifazat and its supporters have called attention to the discrepancies between the government’s acceptance of the anti-Jamat rallies earlier this year – popularly known as the ‘Shahbag protests’– and its violent response to this week’s Hifazat march.

Others say the different government tactics were based on the nature of each protest, with the demonstrations in Dhaka’s Shahbag Square being peaceful sit-ins, compared to the Hifazat’s vandalism and aggression.

“Why should the government’s actions (on Sunday and Monday) be termed undemocratic when security forces acted to protect the lives and properties of innocent people?” asked Abul Barkat, chairman of the economics department at the University of Dhaka, in an interview with IPS.

“I think the police were very careful in their operation to save lives,” he said.

Political parties, meanwhile, have fallen back on the usual blame game: at a press conference at the BNP’s Dhaka branch Monday, spokespeople for the opposition accused members of the ruling Awami League of instigating the violence, a claim the latter has stoutly denied, insisting that the BNP and its ally, the Jamat, were behind the chaos.

While political leaders pointed fingers, the violence quickly spread to the southern city of Khulna, to Sylhet in the north-east, Rajshahi in the north-west and to the southeastern port city of Chittagong, where a day-long clash with law enforcers left at least seven people including one police officer dead, with over 50 people still suffering from severe bullet wounds.