(RSF/IFEX) – On 26 November 2002, RSF demanded the immediate release of a four-member British television crew arrested on 25 November at the Indian border. The organisation also called for an end to official harassment of RSF’s Bangladesh correspondent and his family. “The Bangladesh authorities say they have nothing to hide about the country’s political […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 26 November 2002, RSF demanded the immediate release of a four-member British television crew arrested on 25 November at the Indian border. The organisation also called for an end to official harassment of RSF’s Bangladesh correspondent and his family.
“The Bangladesh authorities say they have nothing to hide about the country’s political and religious situation, but foreign journalists are treated like enemies and those who help them are harassed,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Interior Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury. He asked that the legal measures being taken against the journalists be dropped at once as they constitute a “serious attack on press freedom.”
Zaiba Malik and Bruno Sorrentino, a journalist and cameraman, respectively, with the British television company Channel-4, along with their interpreter Pricila Raj and driver Mujib, were arrested by police as they were about to cross the eastern border into India, near Benapole. They were taken to the capital, Dhaka, for interrogation on suspicion of subversive activities. The British journalists were in Bangladesh to prepare a programme about the political and religious situation the country.
The arrests follow the launch of an intimidation campaign by state security police against the journalists and their two assistants. Saleem Samad, a journalist and local RSF correspondent, is being sought by police because he helped the Channel-4 team. His home is under surveillance by state security agents, his family has been harassed and his telephone line has been cut. Directors of the Bangladesh Centre for Development, Journalism and Communication (BCDJC) have also been placed under surveillance and threatened for helping the foreign journalists.
Such harassment is defended by conservative and Islamist newspapers. For example, the pro-government newspaper “Dainik Dinkal” denounced the two British journalists on 16 November as plotters and published a photograph of them and Samad at an anti-American demonstration near a mosque in Dhaka.
