New York, June 27, 2003- The Committee to
Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the recent
violent attack on Abul Bashar, the local
correspondent for the Bengali-language national
daily newspaper Janakantha (The People's
Voice) in Shariatpur district, which is
located in southern Bangladesh.
According to several local sources and Bashar,
himself, members of the Jatiyatabadi Chattra
Dal (JCD), a student group associated with
the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party
(BNP), forcibly kidnapped Bashar from his
office on June 19. They took him to the
district BNP headquarters where armed members
of the party shot at him with firearms and
brutally beat him, causing injuries to his
backbone, skull, and eyes.
Prior to this incident, Janakantha, which
is known for its critical coverage of the
BNP, ran an article detailing attacks on
Shariatpur residents carried out by the
JCD. CPJ has documented several other cases
of threats and attacks by various groups
on journalists working at Janakantha, including
the murder of senior correspondent Shamsur
Rahman three years ago. Bashar was checked
into a local hospital following the assault,
but the next day, armed members of the BNP
forced his expulsion from the hospital,
said Bashar.
On June 23, Bashar filed a case with the
Shariatpur police station, but no one has
been arrested in connection with the attack,
and he has left the area for fear of further
reprisal.
Political partisans and gangs associated
with the ruling BNP party have been responsible
for a number of recent attacks on members
of the media in Bangladesh. On April 30,
several BNP members kidnapped Atahar Siddik
Khasru, a journalist reporting for the daily
Ittefaq. He was found three weeks later
along the side of the road with his hands
and feet bound with a locked chain. Khasru's
kidnapping followed his reporting on corruption
committed by politicians and police in Sitakunda
in southeastern Bangladesh.
CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit
organization that works to safeguard press
freedom worldwide. For more information
about press conditions in Bangladesh, visit
www.cpj.org
