SOS: Journalists in Bangladesh
August 2by Monica Islam
19th July, 2024
It is not World Press Freedom Day today and I am not here to write about the perils that a journalist faces. But it has definitely been a long, harrowing day for journalists in Bangladesh.
I love journalism and my tryst with this occupation began in 2010 when I applied for the feature writing position for The Daily Star, Bangladesh, the largest-circulating English daily newspaper in Bangladesh, my home country. I was not really a gifted writer or a born writer and I had not studied journalism, creative writing or even English language, but I loved how I could express my feelings, share my experiences and lend a voice to the marginalized through writing. I loved how I could capture and preserve memories and information through text, sounds, images and videos. I even started calling myself the Information Saint. It is an innocent or even childish pursuit that I had taken up as my profession.
And yet, it is disturbing to see that, apart from the vulgar terms that journalists are often levied with such as ‘presstitutes’, it is the journalist community that bears the brunt of all atrocities in any given conflict.
When will the world leaders and the international community notice the plight of journalists?
Monica Islam
In the recent students’ quota reform movement in Bangladesh, unidentified criminals vandalized and torched the government-run channel BTV (Bangladesh Television). BTV had to stop broadcasting indefinitely for the fear of safety of its journalists. Official estimates of the number of journalists who were killed or injured are not available yet but at least three were said to be killed. From various sources which cannot be verified independently, it also came to the forefront that a female journalist in Narayanganj came under severe attack while she was attempting to report on the movement and the ensuing violence. As at the time of writing this article, I came to know from local sources that ATN Bangla News channel’s vehicles were set on fire and the transmission of the channel was disrupted temporarily.
The free flow of information and the duty of journalists were further stalled when the government decided to suspend mobile Internet in Bangladesh to “ensure security”. Later, it was alleged that unidentified criminals destroyed the Internet cables in the country for which the broadband Internet was cut off too. We were suddenly disconnected from the world. I loved sharing news updates about my safe whereabouts with my friends abroad, and suddenly all of that was snatched away from me. The world probably got a whiff of our sufferings as it came to a standstill due to the global IT outage.
Almost a year ago, I wrote about the fate of journalists who were covering the Israel-Gaza conflict. At least 100 journalists have been killed in the war so far. When will the world leaders and the international community notice the plight of journalists?
