(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of Home affairs Mohammad Nasim, RSF expressed concern about an attack on Shaharier Kabir, free-lance journalist and columnist. RSF asked the minister to “conduct an investigation to establish the motives for the attack, identify those responsible and punish them”. Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary-general, reminded the minister that three […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Minister of Home affairs Mohammad Nasim, RSF expressed concern about an attack on Shaharier Kabir, free-lance journalist and columnist. RSF asked the minister to “conduct an investigation to establish the motives for the attack, identify those responsible and punish them”. Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary-general, reminded the minister that three reporters had been killed in Bangladesh in less than two years.
According to the information obtained by RSF, Kabir was stabbed on the night of 28 August 2000 by four unidentified men when he returned home from a meeting at Dhaka University. They stopped him on his scooter and asked him to go with them. The journalist promptly shouted for help and scuffled with the attackers, who fled after stabbing him in the arm and face. A file has been opened by Tejgaon police.
In a separate incident, Farazi Ajmol Hossain, a senior reporter with the daily “Ittefaq” and secretary of the Jessore Press Club, received death threats by telephone on 25 August. On the same day, a winding-sheet and letter were sent to his home by unknown persons who threatened to kill him and told him he was “forbidden to write anything” about the incident. They also told him to “prepare for death”.