Shukur Hossain

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about threats and attacks against journalists in the run-up to general elections scheduled for January 23, 2007. We urge you to do everything in your power as leader of the interim government to ensure that assaults on the press are adequately investigated and punished, and that journalists are free to report on the election campaign without fear of retribution.

For Bangladeshi journalists, covering crime and corruption can be as dangerous as reporting in a war zone. Journalists regularly endure vicious attacks, and since 1998, five Bangladeshi journalists have been killed in reprisal for their work.

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to request information about the status of the police investigation into the alleged kidnapping of Shukur Hossain, crime reporter for the Khulna-based newspaper Anirban. Hossain, who has been missing since July 5, is feared dead. At around midnight on July 5, a group of about 35 armed men kidnapped Hossain from his home in Ula, a village near the town of Dumuria in Khulna District. Police suspect the assailants belong to the outlawed Biplobi Communist Party, one of several guerrilla groups active in the southwest.