The Commonwealth Journalists Association is deeply shocked that Shyamal Dutta, Editor of Bangladesh’s Bhorer Kagoj newspaper and a vice president of the CJA was kidnapped along with two colleagues by unknown militants on 15 September.
The three journalists were robbed by the gang. Police then arrived. They arrested and detained Shyamal and his colleagues, took them to a local police station and charged them with murder. The charges are clearly spurious but allow police powers they would not have with lesser charges.
Shyamal is currently on court-ordered remand for seven days during which police are free to interrogate him.
He is among 52 journalists who have been similarly charged because they were carrying out their professional duties, including reporting on violent incidents in which people were killed.
At least five journalists are known to have been killed in the past seven weeks. One journalist was killed while trying to leave for Europe. Many others are in hiding.
We consider this wave of killings, violent attacks, acts of intimidation and arrests to be a grave indictment of the state of legitimate media freedoms in Bangladesh.
We call on Mohammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate and head of the interim government of Bangladesh, to ensure that Dutta and other arrested journalists are immediately released without being maltreated or victimised, and these trumped up charges against them dropped.
We also urge the interim government to demonstrate its commitment to press freedom by ensuring that all journalists and media outlets can operate without fear of persecution for their journalistic activities, either currently or under the previous government.
