[hr-media] Bangladesh: Government threatens to prosecute paper for sedition

Reporters Without Borders and the Bangladesh Centre for Development,
Journalism and Communication (BCDJC) expressed their great concern today at
the Bangladeshi government¹s threat of a sedition trial in its bid to force
the independent daily newspaper Janakantha to reveal its sources for an
article about corruption in police appointments. "The government has every
right to demand a right of reply to an article, but we remind you that the
principle of protecting a journalist¹s sources, which is under threat in
many countries, is one of the fundamentals of press freedom," said
Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard and BCDJC
president Nayyemul Islam Khan in a letter to interior minister Altaf
Hossain Chowdhury. They urged the minister to stop such harassment and to
respect the right of journalists not to reveal their sources.

After the article appeared on 8 July, the interior ministry sent a
threatening letter to the paper, accusing it of trying to demoralise the
police and giving it two days to supply the names of the sources for the
story.  Four days after the ultimatum expired, the ministry repeated its
demand in another letter. A third letter, on 21 July, threatened the paper
with prosecution under articles 131 and 132 of the Criminal Code which
provide for very heavy punishment for sedition.  The letter also accused
the paper of having tried again to demoralise the police by printing
another article, this time about the purge of 36 police officers because
they were veterans of the 1971 war of independence. The paper's reaction to
the government campaign is that articles about corruption could help the
government punish those responsible.

On January, Reporters Without Borders had already denounced the harassment
against the paper. On january 16, 2002, the company supplying Dhaka with
electricity (DESA) had cut off power to Dainik Janakantha's printing
facility in Dhaka. According to one DESA employee, the order to cut the
power "came from the top. On January 14, Kabir Uddin Hannu, an elected
official from a village in southern Bangladesh affiliated with the ruling
Bangladesh Nationalist Party, together with his henchmen, had violently
struck Shawkat Milton, a Dainik Janakantha staff correspondent in Barisal.
Several days earlier, on January 8, Reazzudin Jami, a Dainik Janakantha
correspondent in Brahmanbaria (in eastern Bangladesh), had been assaulted
by armed activist members of the BNP's youth movement.

The government had already stopped buying advertising space in the Dainik
Janakantha on November 22, 2001. This decision followed the publication of
articles on the harsh abuse allegedly perpetrated by members of the ruling
party against Hindu minorities and Awami League militants. In an editorial
published on the daily's front page, the editorial staff affirmed that this
decision came from the highest level of government, and not from the Film
and Publications Department, which "simply carries out orders."


--
Vincent Brossel
Asia - Pacific Desk
Reporters Sans Frontières
5 rue Geoffroy Marie
75009 Paris
33 1 44 83 84 70
33 1 45 23 11 51 (fax)
asia@rsf.org