When you can't argue, just shut it up!

Brilliant strategy to shut up the press!

Useless progress

There are ways with which one could kill the snake without breaking sticks. The best technique is known by the best devils. It’s no easy work as one has to be camouflage like innocent and do the evil works articulately and tactfully. The concurrent political turmoil and the press freedom are more or less concocted by this kind of cocktail by the incumbent government. Here are the issues that made the things unnecessarily or deliberately difficult for the country, people and opponents. What is the objective- simply stay in power and get rich.

Bangladesh has many folded chronicle problems to solve- say from infrastructural work and economic works, which many thought the crux of the all other problems. Let’s leave all other political and laws and human rights issues. My focus in this article would be mainly on the press control and abduction and government tactics to numb the public views.
This is clear that present Awami government do not like to hear any criticism of their wrong doing and crimes and corruptions. For example- the corruption in the Padma Bridge project in which World Bank also withdrew its support and terminate the contract for funding, second, biggest corruption was the fraud and forgery from National banks or state owned banks by the government allied business corporate, third biggest is the scamming of funds from Stock exchange, fourth one is collecting and cheating public in the name of Multilevel –Marketing projects. The ministerial level people and renowned politician of the incumbent party were involved and well documented in all the million dollar scams. Government did nothing in all the cases. The newspaper which reported it has become more and more popular in Bangladesh (Amar Desh), it’s a Bengali newspaper and sold at premium price, it runs without advertisement from any government agencies nor from other parties. Yet, it sustains as most of the people love it to read for its investigative and informative revelation of facts and news, which other newspapers don’t dare to. This made almost all the other newspapers, particularly the Pro-government ones jealous. For this reason none of these pro-government newspapers do not stand against the government action of shutting the Amar Desh daily.

Let’s take a closer look in the matter. The specific allegation against the Editor in-charge were hollow and funny though- which says- it created incitement against the government by publishing some news which is related to the International War Crimes Tribunal; which was actually a translated report taken from the Economist. The subject matter was- one of the Justices of the Tribunal conversed and took help in writing the judgment from a Belgium resident Bangladeshi national. It was that Brussels based person who dictated and advised how to put the matter in the judgment, which is not fair in the eye of any Justice System. Moreover, it shows how poorly the matter has been handled by the Tribunal which the Government solely installed and alleged to be biased and unfair. Second, daring job the newspaper did was disclosing inside information about the Government made puppet movement of Shah-bag, which at some point in time publicized by the pro-government media as non-political and neutral conscious peoples movement. It appears that the truth depicted its own face and proved to be the government-blessed activism to mute the opposition who are alleging the government against its unjustified issues and corruption cases. The only newspaper that unveiled the mockery was Amar Desh.

Apparently many other government claims, activities and brutality against oppositions have been challenged in that newspaper, which government cannot answer politically, nor can it deny. Ultimately, the editor is arrested with shameful excuses, and the press was put under lock and key. The rest is simple- law suits, harassment, and torture in the name of remanding by the police. One might raise the question of Justice System. More pity that his mother was also facing charges, along with other newspaper staff and colleagues. How dreadful the political vengeance could be this is an example. Most of all this is a message to all other newspapers that if you do tit be ready for tat!