Bangladesh / Asia

New York, March 13, 2013–Authorities in Bangladesh must immediately investigate attacks on a journalist’s car and a local press club that occurred within a day of each other, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The attacks took place amid massive politicized strikes and demonstrations that have swept the country.

News accounts reported that several journalists were injured in February 2013 protests that swept the country following a prison term handed to a senior leader of an Islamist opposition party.

Long-standing antagonism between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s Awami League and the opposition Bangladesh National Party—what critics call “zero-sum politics”—set off street violence that threatened the safety of journalists. A constitutional amendment eliminated the creation of caretaker governments to oversee general elections, a step likely to intensify political passions surrounding the scheduled 2013 vote. The…

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New York, January 15, 2013–Authorities in Bangladesh must immediately investigate Monday’s stabbing of a blogger in Dhaka, determine the motive, and bring the perpetrators to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Several police officers in Dhaka, the capital, beat and briefly detained two photographers on December 11, 2012, as they covered clashes between police and supporters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, according to news reports.

New York, December 19, 2012–CPJ is deeply concerned by sedition charges leveled against Mahmudur Rahman, the acting editor and majority owner of the Bengali-language pro-opposition daily Amar Desh and the paper’s publisher, Alhaj Hasmat Ali. The two were charged after publishing news stories based on leaked transcripts of conversations between a lawyer and the lead…

New York, June 18, 2012–Bangladeshi authorities must immediately investigate the murder of a journalist on late Friday night and bring the perpetrators to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

New York, May 29, 2012–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Monday night’s attack on the offices of an Internet news outlet in Dhaka in which at least nine journalists were wounded.