bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Reporters run the risk of attack, abduction, torture, even murder, says watchdog

A neatly folded Islamic shroud tumbled out of a parcel sent to Golam Mortaza, a Bangladeshi investigative reporter of the weekly news magazine Saptahik 2000 two weeks ago.

An accompanying note in Bengali threatened Mortaza that as his days were numbered, he would soon need the white burial shroud.

Mortaza, who has exposed organised crime, religious extremists and corrupt politicians, regularly receives death threats from unidentified callers on his cell phone, office and home numbers.

This sounds frightening but is nothing compared with what other Bangladeshi journalists are facing. They are being physically attacked, abducted, tortured, jailed, forced to flee their homes and even getting murdered just for reporting the news.

On January 15, Manik Saha, a reporter for the New Age newspaper, was killed in a broad daylight bomb attack in Khulna.

Maoists who claimed responsibility declared that 20 other journalists would be 'eliminated' for 'misreporting'.

Extortion by several self-proclaimed Maoist groups is rampant in southwest Bangladesh, and journalists are frequent targets.

Over the past decade, 12 journalists have been killed in Bangladesh.

All the cases are still unsolved.

Four reporters have been murdered and 65 brutally attacked since Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia came to power in October 2001.

Attacks on press clubs where reporters meet and socialise after work have sharply increased.

Last month Bangladesh was branded the 'most violent country for journalists in Asia' by noted Washington-based media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

But its remarks were immediately rejected by Dhaka as 'irresponsible and motivated'.

'It takes real courage to be a journalist in Bangladesh,' said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper after a week-long fact-finding visit.

Ms Cooper accused Bangladeshi authorities of 'constant surveillance' and intimidation to prevent the delegation from discussing press freedom issues openly with local journalists.

Moreover, CPJ condemned the mass sacking of journalists belonging to state-run BSS news agency by Begum Zia's government on political grounds; the muzzling of ETV, Bangladesh's first independent broadcaster, and the detention of reporters on sedition charges.

A Reuters correspondent was thrown into jail last year for falsely quoting the home minister as saying that al-Qaeda may have been responsible for attacks on cinemas in Mymensingh - what many considered a basic reporting error.

Government advertisements are denied to newspapers critical of Begum Zia's regime and large companies are advised not to aid or finance 'unfriendly' publications.

According to Nayeemul Hasan Khan, who heads the Bangladesh Centre for Development, Journalism and Communication, press freedom was also trampled upon during former premier Sheikh Hasina Wajed's Awami League government.

Mr Khan said some journalists who choose to openly toe the party line of whatever government is in power find they pay the price after a change in administration.

'But what bothers us most is the victimisation of genuinely independent journalists for calling a spade a spade,' he said.

Analysts say that the main threat to press freedom are fundamentalist Islamic parties in the BNP-led ruling coalition, who sometimes brand non-partisan secular reporters as 'infidels' or anti-Islamic and publicly exhort their cadres to teach them a lesson.

Commentators say the press may come to see even darker days if a bill proposing summary trial and imprisonment of journalists for defaming any MP becomes law.



Bangladesh 'most violent place in Asia to be a journalist'