Amnesty indicts B'desh for attacks on journalists

NEW DELHI: As emergency-ruled Bangladesh marked its 36th Independence Day on Monday with news from Dhaka of tight security over fears of bomb attacks, an Amnesty International report released here moans the rapid shrinking of liberal space in the country due to intense political polarisation and a growing cult of violence.
The Amnesty report focuses on the increasing dangers faced by human rights defenders — especially journalists — in Bangladesh.It’s the first of a series of reports on South Asian countries Amnesty plans to release in the run up to the Saarc summit, scheduled to be held in New Delhi on April 3-4. Amnesty will also release reports on China and the US, since both countries have observer status at the summit.
The report highlights attacks on at least six prominent journalists since 2000. It notes with concern that investigations into all these attacks have been shoddy and all cases are pending trial. In July 2000, Shamsur Rahman, a BBC journalist was killed in Jessore. The case has not yet gone to trial. In 2001, Tipu Sultan, a correspondent for the United News of Bangladesh, was allegedly beaten up by the private army of a local politician. Sultan's hands, arms and legs were crushed. The high court has stayed proceedings in the case following a petition by one of the accused, the report says.
In January 2004, veteran journalist Manik Chandra Saha was killed in Khulna, allegedly by a Maoist group, for reporting on the illegal activities of the outfit. The report also sates on the claim of fellow journalists in Khulna that the police chargesheet in the case does not identify the real masterminds of the killing.
Khulna journalists have similarly described as flawed the chargesheet filed in the killing of another journalist, Humayun Kabir Balu, the editor of Bangla newspaper Dainik Janmabhumi. Balu had been campaigning for an investigation into Saha’s death. He was killed in a bomb attack in June 2004.
Amnesty also points to human rights abuses arising out of the traditional tension between the two main political streams represented by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League. The schism has split civil society vertically. While one demands greater Islamisation, the other asserts the Bengali culture of secularism.
The report notes that since the last general elections in 2001, religious parties in the ruling coalition, including Jamaat-e-Islami, have been putting pressure on the government to introduce more stringent Islamic law, demanding, for example, the enactment of a blasphemy law.
The government has repeatedly yielded to pressure, the report says. It has not brought to justice members of Islamic groups involved in violent attacks against members of the Ahmadiyya community. And, it has not brought to justice those involved in an attack on Dr Humayun Azad, a leading Bangladeshi writer.
The report also touches upon the growing gun culture in Bangladeshi society. The trend, it states, can be traced to the anti-Ershad student movement of the 1990s.