REPRESSION IN BANGLADESH

The Hoot Desk

Things are not hunky dory for the press in Bangladesh. On the 29^th of August the private TV channel Ekushey Television went off the air  after it lost a court battle to retain its broadcast license. The Supreme Court rejected its appeal against a high court ruling cancelling its licence.

Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) a France-based media watchdog, and the Bangladesh Centre for Development, Journalism and Communication (BCDJC) have expressed their grave concern about an attempt to kill journalist Belal Chowdhury and about death threats made to four other reporters by Islamic fundamentalists in Faridpur, west of Dhaka.  Since Begum Khaleda Zia came to power, says RSF,  at least 145 journalists were assaulted or given death threats.Sixteen newsrooms or press clubs have been attacked during this period.

The RSF report was prepared after consultations with different government officials, editors, media professional bodies, human rights NGOs and those engaged in media issues in Bangladesh.

To return to Ekushey Television which has done some pathbreaking public service programming in Bangladesh, a seven-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Mainur Reza Chowdhury rejected the appeal after a six-day hearing, the attorney general¿s office said at the end of August. The high court had in July cancelled Ekushey Television¿s license on the ground that it had been wrongly granted. Two teachers of Dhaka University and a journalist had filed the petition in September, a month before the
general election that had brought the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led coalition of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia to power.

Ekushey Television was the first of three private broadcasters in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is now left two private TV channels - ATN (Bangla) and Channel I
(eye) - besides BTV. Ekushey went on air in 1999 after being granted a licence by the government of then prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed and had broken the monopoly enjoyed till  then by state-run Bangladesh TV (BTV). Newspapers, intellectuals and cultural activists had appealed to the government to permit Ekushey Television stay on air."We want to watch ETV," had become a popular slogan in many parts of the country.

Technicians of the state-owned Bangladesh Television cut off ETV¿s broadcasts within one hour of the Supreme Court¿s decision today (29 August) to reject ETV¿s appeal and confirm the cancellation of its licence. Hundreds of people, including performers and human rights
activists, had gathered outside the court in a show of solidarity with ETV.

"The intransigence and haste of the authorities responsible for implementing this judicial decision seems to have been an act of revenge against an overly independent television channel", Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said in a letter to Information
Minister Tariqul Islam.Ménard noted in his letter that just a few months ago, the report of a
Reporters Without Borders investigation had hailed recent progress made by Bangladesh in radio and television plurality. "Today, ETV¿s disappearance is a dramatic backward step for viewers in Bangladesh", he said. The letter urged the minister to find a way to let ETV continue
broadcasting while it obtains a new licence under last year¿s telecommunications law.

On the deteriorating climate for the press in Bangladesh, Ménard and Bangladesh Centre for Development, Journalism and Communication (BCDJC) president Nayeemul Islam Khan