New York, February 13, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death of two TV journalists in Dhaka and calls on Bangladeshi authorities to act speedily to bring the perpetrators to justice.
]]>New York, February 13, 2012--The Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death of two TV journalists in Dhaka and calls on Bangladeshi authorities to act speedily to bring the perpetrators to justice.
]]>Police detained Ekramul Haque, editor of Sheershanews website and Sheersha Kagoj weekly, on extortion charges on July 31. On October 25, the High Court in the country's capital, Dhaka, granted the journalist bail, and he was released on November 1. But he was arrested again at the gate of the jail as he was leaving, news website bdnews24 reported.
]]>Rabiul told CPJ he was arrested without warrant and detained by police, who accused him of committing robbery in Rajshahi. Rabiul, a journalist for the Daily Sunshine, a Rajshahi-based local newspaper in the Bangla Language, told CPJ by telephone that he reports regularly on police corruption. Rajshahi is in the northwest of Bangladesh, along the border with India.
]]>Arifur Rahman, Prothom Alo
RELEASED
Arifur Rahman was freed from Dhaka Central Jail after the police officer who had filed a case against him failed to appear in court hearings because he was in East Timor, The Associated Press reported.
President Iajuddin Ahmed
People's Republic of Bangladesh
Via Ambassador Shamseer M. Chowdhury
Bangladesh Embassy
Washington, D.C.
Via fax: (202) 244-5366
Dear Mr. President:
The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned about the upcoming trial of Jahangir Alam Akash, a reporter for the Bengali-language daily Dainik Sangbad, based in Rajshahi.He is charged with extortion, but we believe Akash has been unfairly targeted because of his investigative reporting, and we are greatly concerned about his health.
Akash was taken to the prison hospital on Thursday with leg injuries, his wife told local journalist Shahriar Kabir and press freedom advocate Mainul Islam Khan. Akash, who could not stand unassisted and had visible abrasions on his face, told his wife that an official from the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite anticrime and antiterrorism force under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Home Affairs, had beaten him the previous night, Khan told CPJ.
]]>Akash, a reporter for the Bengali-language daily Dainik Sangbad, was jailed on an extortion charge, the second such allegation made against him this month, said Mainul Islam Khan, a press advocate for the Bangladesh Center for Development Journalism and Communication. Akash was still being held and had not appeared in court as of late this evening. Prior to the arrest, Akash told CPJ that he had been charged on a separate extortion allegation.
]]>Chrono Satellite Broadcast (CSB) News
SHUTDOWN
The Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) ordered CSB to close for seven days. BTRC said a document applying for a frequency in October 2006 was forged in order to meet a filing deadline. BTRC officials and security personnel walked in to the CSB office and switched off its transmission at 6:34pm, according to Mohammad Ali Zakir, company secretary of CSB’s owner, Focus Multimedia Company Ltd. The officials also issued a show cause notice to CSB asking it to explain within seven days why the frequency allocated to CSB would not be cancelled permanently while it remained off air for seven days.
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