Bangladesh turning into a ‘Red Zone’ for Journalists 29 murder and freedom of press crossfire by autocracy gov

Bangladesh turning into a ‘Red Zone’ for Journalists 29 murder and freedom of press crossfire by autocracy gov

Journalist Md. Nora Alam (Sufi Borshan)  from London.

29 journalists and freelancers have been killed in Bangladesh since 1992, including last month; the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports. Attacks on journalists are not only attacks on the victims, but also on freedom of expression and freedom of the media,” EU high representative Federica Mogherini said in a declaration. The CPJ, a New York-based independent organisation, investigates the death of every journalist to determine whether it is work-related one. According to CPJ, motives of 19 of the killings in Bangladesh were ‘confirmed.’

The victims are Niloy Neel (Freelance, 7 August 2015), Ananta Bijoy Das (Freelance, 12 May 2015), Washiqur Rahman Babu (Freelance, 30 March 2015). Avijit Roy (Freelance, 26 February 2015), Sadrul Alam Nipul, Dainik Mathabhanga (21 May 2014, in Chuadanga), Ahmed Rajib Haider (Freelance, 15 Feb 2013), Jamal Uddin, Gramer Kagoj (15 June 2012, in Kashipur), Gautam Das, Samakal (17 November 2005), Sheikh Belaluddin of Sangram, Kamal Hossain of Ajker Kagoj, Humayun Kabir of Janmabhumi, Manik Saha of New Age, Shukur Hossain of Anirban, Harunur Rashid of Dainik Purbanchal, Nahar Ali of Anirban, Shamsur Rahman of Janakantha, Mir Illias Hossain of Dainik Bir Darpan, Saiful Alam Mukul of Daily Runner and Mohammad Quamruzzaman of Neel Sagar (19 Febuary 1996, in Nilphamari).

CPJ also recorded those motives behind the killing of eight of the Bangladeshi journalists murdered since 1992 remained unconfirmed. They are Nurul Islam Faruqi of Channel-i, Shah Alam Sagar of Oporadh Domon, Meherun Runi of ATN Bangla, Golam Mustofa Sarowar of Maasranga Television, Diponkar Chakrabarty of Durjoy Bangla, Syed Farroque Ahmed of Pubali Barta, freelancer Ahsan Ali and SM Alauddin of Ogrodoot.

The EU declaration said media are the mirror of societies and ‘if they are free and critical, we are free and safe’. The EU asked the state authorities to fully abide by their international obligations to effectively, promptly and in an independent manner investigate such crimes and to ensure that both state and non-state perpetrators and instigators of such violence are brought to justice. The Bangladesh Police charged five militants of an al-Qaeda-linked banned Islamist group, the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), with the machete hacking murder of Md Oyasiqur Rahman Babu. Oyasiqur, a 26-year-old atheist blogger killed on March 30 in Dhaka, was well-known for his secular writings.

Freedom of the press:

The freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through mediums including various electronic media and published materials. While such freedom mostly implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state, its preservation may be sought through constitutional or other legal protections.

With respect to governmental information, any government may distinguish which materials are public or protected from disclosure to the public based on classification of information as sensitive, classified or secret and being otherwise protected from disclosure due to relevance of the information to protecting the national interest. Many governments are also subject to sunshine laws or freedom of information legislation that are used to define the ambit of national interest. .

Authorities limit official access to journalists from certain publications. The government remained sensitive to international scrutiny; foreign publications are subject to censorship, while foreign journalists and press freedom advocates have encountered increasing difficulties in obtaining visas to enter Bangladesh and are put under surveillance while in the country. In an effort to tighten censorship laws, the government passed legislation in last year  that would enable officials to suspend the broadcast of any private satellite television channel “for the public interest.”

Journalists are regularly harassed and violently attacked by a range of actors, including organized crime groups, political parties and their supporters, government authorities, and leftist and  others  groups. Most commonly, they are subjected to such attacks as a result of their coverage of corruption, criminal activity, political violence, the rise of secular fundamentalism, or human rights abuses. Police brutality toward photographers attempting to document protests or other political events also remained a concern.

Acting Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman jailed for 3 years:

News publish agonists Hasina government  popular  Bengali daily amar desh  close by government  and acting editor mahmudur rahman in  jail more than 3 years without judgement.  Acting Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman was sentenced to imprisonment for three years on Thursday for not submitting his wealth statement to the Anti-Corruption Commission. The judge of the Special Judge’s Court-3 in Dhaka, Abu Ahmed Jamadar, also fined Mahmudur Tk 1 lakh and said that he would need to serve one more month in jail if the failed to pay the fine. The judge also said that the days Mahmudur had been detained in the case would be deducted from his jail term. The judge read out the judgement in the presence of Mahmudur in the makeshift courtroom set up on Dhaka Central Jail parade ground at Bakhshibazar. On April 11, 2013, the Detective Branch of police arrested Mahmudur at the Bangla daily office at Karwanbazar in a case filed for publishing a leaked Skype conversation of then International Crimes Tribunal chairman Hustice Nizamul Haq. - See more at: http://newagebd.net/147318/mahmudur-rahman-jailed-for-3-years/#sthash.99SKRFDM.dpuf

BNP complaint government controlling mass media:

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party on alleged that the incumbent government was controlling mass media through a ‘secret mass media policy.’ He asked the government to reopen all closed newspapers and television channels including Channel one, Diganta TV, Islamic TV and daily Amar Desh.  BNP spokesman Asaduzzaman Ripon at a briefing at the party central office said that the government was interfering with the mass media overtly and covertly. He said that people critical of the government were not being invited in talk shows as the government interfered with the selection of talk-show guests. He alleged that the government was trying to control mass media through controlling advertisements in the media. He mentioned that advertisements of multinational institutions were not being published in the Daily Star and daily Prothom Alo for many days. He said that defamation cases were also being filed against editors and journalists to obstruct their professional duties. The spokesman asked the government to reactivate the Press Council to deal with the allegations against editors and journalists and demanded that the provision of prosecution of editors and journalists in criminal courts on charge of defamation be scrapped. He alleged that the level of intimidation and suppression of mass media increased after Hasanul Haq Inu was made information minister. He asked the government to reopen all closed newspapers and television channels including Channel one, Diganta TV, Islamic TV and daily Amar Desh. - See more at: http://newagebd.net/160057/govt-controlling-mass-media-through-secret-policy-bnp/#sthash.FTu5Ta63.dpuf

Last December two journalist murder:

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns the murder of 30-year-old journalist Mashiur Rahman Utsho on Wednesday, December 23 in Rangpur city in Bangladesh. Utsho was a staff reporter at the Juger Alo daily. On 23 December in the evening, unidentified assailants hacked Utsho to death after tying him to a tree in an isolated place in Dharmadas area on Dhaka-Rangpur Highway.

Police officers recovered the body on 24 December and confirmed that the death was the result of a planned murder with killers hitting the journalist with sharp weapons in the head and hands. The police is trying to recover the cell phone, motorbike and digital camera the killers took away from the slain journalist.

The motive behind the killing is yet to be ascertained. Utsho’s colleagues said he might have been murdered for writing regularly on drug peddling following which law enforcers busted some dens of drug peddlers and traders. On 24 December, Utsho’s newspaper published his report on how narcotics department was struggling to control drug peddlers due to lack of human resources. The journalist was the breadwinner of his family since his father, an employee of a private firm, became paralysed a few years before and lost his job.

The Bangladesh Manobadhikar Sangbadik Forum (BMSF) has condemned the killing and demanded immediate arrest and punishment of the killers.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is saddened by the death of 45-year-old journalist Aurangzeb Sajib, who was found dead on Wednesday, 23 December, three days after he went missing in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. The IFJ demands urgent investigation to find the truth behind his death. Sajib, the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) correspondent of the Bangladesh Pratidin daily and TV stations Banglavision, Somoy, Jamuna and ITV, went missing on Sunday, December 21. Police recovered his body in the Dhaleshwari River in Munshiganj on 23 December. On 21 December in the morning, Sajib left his house in Chawkbazar in Old Dhaka and went to his work at the DMCH station on his motorcycle. His two mobile-phone handsets and press identity card were found in a Chandpur-bound launch in the afternoon. While the police is yet to establish the reason for his death, .Sajib’s family claims that he was killed. - See more at: https://samsn.ifj.org/bangladeshi-journalist-found-dead/#sthash.KSVindd4.dpuf

The charge sheet filed at a Dhaka magistrates court listed Zikrullah alias Hasan, 19; Ariful Islam, 19; Saiful Islam alias Mansur, 23; Junayed alias Taher, 30; and Abdullah alias Akram Hossain, 26 in connection with the murder. Zikrullah and Ariful were caught by locals immediately following the murder and handed over to police. However, Taher and Abdullah remain on the run and at large.

In other developments, on August 29, Dhaka Police arrested Kausar Hossain Khan, 29, and Kamal Hossain Sardar, 29, for the murder of Niladri Chottopadhay Niloy, who was hacked to death in another machete murder on August 7. The suspects are reported to be also members of the ABT. Two others, Saad-al-Nahin and Masud Rana, were arrested two weeks earlier for their suspected involvement in Niloy’s death. 

On August 18, Bangladeshi police arrested Bangladeshi-British man, 58-year-old Touhidur Rahman, and two others suspects Sadek Ali and Aminul Mollick, for the killing US-Bangladeshi blogger and author Avijit Roy. Roy was killed during a visit to Dhaka in February this year, when he and his wife were attacked with machetes on a public street. Roy’s wife survived the attack. A Dhaka Court rejected bail on September 3 for the three accused, two of whom are also members of the ABT. They are currently awaiting trial in jail. According to the BBC and The Guardian, these three men have also been linked to the murder of Ananta Bijoy Das, killed in May this year.

The recent decent into violence and attacks on bloggers and journalists in Bangladesh had its origins in the so-called Shahbag Protests of 2013, when thousands of people joined in protests demanding capital punishment for war criminals and the banning of institutions formed by or supporting those accused of war crimes during Bangladesh’s independence war in 1971. With citizen journalists and bloggers playing a role reporting and informing on the public protests, many have since found themselves as targets on a widely-circulated kill list targeting perceived secular and atheist writers launched by Islamic extremists. In February 2013, secular blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, also known as Thaba Baba, was killed by assailants wielding machetes outside his home in Dhaka. Haider's brother said after his death that his brother had been targeted by the ruling party supporters   --for his "online activities”.

the IFJ, which has been campaigning for action following the murders, welcomes the arrests and applauds the work of the Bangladeshi police in capturing the perpetrators. “These arrests and charges bring hope for some justice, which is critical for the future of freedom of expression and democracy in Bangladesh itself,” the IFJ said.

“For the sake of those who have already lost their lives in the most heinous way, this killing season must be stopped. The Bangladesh government now has a critical responsibility to all Bangladeshis to send a clear message that these machete murders of journalists, bloggers and media workers will not be tolerated and those responsible will meet the punished. Justice must be strong; it must say freedom of expression cannot be silenced by fear, intimidation and the spectre of murder.”

The biggest problem is the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act that severely restricts the right to freedom of expression in Bangladesh. This act has resulted into enforced disappearance of citizens, police brutality and hazardous workplaces in the factories of Bangladesh as per Amnesty International’s 2014/15 annual report. The report said dozens of people forcibly disappeared. Journalists and human rights defenders continued to be attacked and harassed. Violence against women is a major human rights concern.

In Bangladesh,  police enjoy impunity, furthermore torture and other ill-treatment is widespread and police is routinely torturing detainees in their custody. The report added the torture methods included beating, suspension from the ceiling, electric shocks to the genitals and, in some cases, shooting detainees’ legs. The reports said at least one person was executed with no right to appeal against his death sentence.

The government’s use of Section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act severely restricted the right to freedom of expression. Under this section, those convicted of violating the Act could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison if the charges were brought against them before 6 October 2013. At that time, an amendment not only increased the maximum punishment to 14 years in prison but also imposed a minimum punishment of seven years.

Section 57 of the ICT Act criminalized a wide array of peaceful actions such as criticizing Islamic religious views in a newspaper article or reporting on human rights violations. At least four bloggers, two Facebook users and two officials of a human rights organization were charged under Section 57 of the ICT Act during 2013-2014. They included bloggers Asif Mohiuddin, Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Mashiur Rahman Biplob and Rasel Parvez, and human rights defenders Adilur Rahman Khan and Nasiruddin Elan.

Dozens of media workers- said that they had been threatened by security agencies for criticizing the authorities. The threats were directly given to journalists -through phone calls – and also via messages to their editors. Many journalists and talk show participants said they exercised self-censorship as a result.

Freedom of expression was also threatened by religious groups. At least in 10 instances, these groups were reported to have spread rumors that a certain individual had used social media to insult Islam, or had engaged allegedly in anti-Islamic activity in the workplace.

At least five people were subsequently attacked. Two were killed and others sustained serious injuries. The two killed were Ahmed Rajib and a Rajshahi University teacher, AKM Shafiul Islam, who died of stab wounds in November 2014, allegedly perpetrated by members of a group who denounced his opposition to female students wearing burqa in his class ”. Anti social groups have emerged as an increasing threat to the safety of journalists and online activists and as a force against pluralism, gender equality, non-violence, and diversity.

At present, the most significant threat to freedom of expression online in Bangladesh is the targeting by authorities of individuals who take to the internet to voice critical opinions. In general, citizens are technically able to do what they like online but it does not mean these restraints will have no effects. On the contrary, bedizens and  click activists are facing significant risk if they cross certain lines in their online posting such as calling for protests, investigating official and non-official corruption or criticizing the high officials of the government.

Bangladesh is politically a highly polarized – country.  – Collectively, all these factors, pose a serious threat for human rights activists who attempt to promote freedom of expression online or offline without undertaking the local political context, history and culture. At present the most significant obstacle to freedom of expression online which must be addressed are: content blocking, access to the internet, violation of the right to privacy, hate speech, surveillance and the intimidation of individuals who take to the internet to voice -opinions critical of the executive and judiciary.

Despite of guarantee by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh as its Article 32 clearly states that “no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty, save in accordance with the law,” but torture and extrajudicial killing are common phenomenon in Bangladesh and it is continuing. All this is happening despite repeated assurances to stop.  Since the declaration of ‘zero’ tolerance on torture and extrajudicial killings by the government during the Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council, around 281 people were killed without judicial procedure and 34 people torture at the hand of law enforcement agencies which is more alarming. Recently, the government passed a law criminalizing torture, -, but so far the law has yielded no positive results. . Most of the times, the law enforcing agencies denied any knowledge about the disappearances.

In recent years, involuntary disappearances are on the rise as a result of this new trend in Bangladesh. People are abducted and disappeared from various places in broad daylight by – men claiming to be members of law enforcement agencies. Some are recovered as dead after they were their abductions. In many cases, families of the missing persons claim that law enforcing agencies picked up the victims.

Though the judicial system in Bangladesh is independent in written, however the judiciary especially the court is not absolutely independent in practice. Under these circumstances, there is a need for a vigorous internet freedom strategy which would establish the political, social, cultural, environmental, institutional and professional conditions to guarantee internet freedom for every citizen of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh:  Amnesty International report; Freedom of expression:

The government’s use of Section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act severely restricted the right to freedom of expression. Under this section, those convicted of violating the Act could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison if the charges were brought against them before 6 October 2013; at that time, an amendment not only increased the maximum punishment to 14 years in prison but also imposed a minimum punishment of seven years.

Section 57 of the ICT Act criminalized a wide array of peaceful actions such as criticizing Islamic religious views in a newspaper article or reporting on human rights violations. At least four bloggers, two Facebook users and two officials of a human rights organization were charged under Section 57 of the ICT Act during 2013-2014. They included bloggers Asif Mohiuddin, Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Mashiur Rahman Biplob and Rasel Parvez; and human rights defenders Adilur Rahman Khan and Nasiruddin Elan.

More than a dozen media workers, including journalists, said that they had been threatened by security agencies for criticizing the authorities. The threats were usually in phone calls directly to the journalists, or via messages to their editors. Many journalists and talk show participants said they exercised self-censorship as a result.

Freedom of expression was also threatened by religious groups. In at least 10 instances, these groups were reported to have spread rumours that a certain individual had used social media to insult Islam, or had engaged in allegedly anti-Islamic activity in the workplace. At least five people were subsequently attacked; two were killed and others sustained serious injuries. The two killed were Ahmed Rajib2 and a Rajshahi University teacher, AKM Shafiul Islam, who died of stab wounds in November 2014, allegedly perpetrated by members of a group who denounced his opposition to female students wearing burqa in his class”.

Human Rights Watch report: Civil Society and Media:

The government introduced several measures aimed at cracking down on critics, continuing a trend from the previous year. In July, the government proposed the draft Foreign Donations (Voluntary Activities) Regulation Act, designed to regulate operations and funding for any group receiving foreign grants, including Bangladesh offices of foreign and international organizations. The draft law contains unnecessary, onerous, and intrusive provisions, with vague and overly broad language to control NGOs.

In August, the government published a new media policy for all audio, video, and audio-visual content transmitted through any means which contains overly broad language aimed at significantly curtailing critical reporting. Several television and news outlets that were shut down in 2013 for critical reporting remained closed through 2014.