Media in Bangladesh under threat
Dhaka, Bangladesh: Radical Muslim organization Ansarullah Bangla has sent emails to Bangladeshi newspapers in which organization warned editors for dire consequence if they do not stop to hire Muslim women.
Journalists in Bangladesh say they are alarmed by email threats warning them of “severe action” if they publish reports about the murders of “atheist” bloggers or their beliefs and these emails also warned editors not to employ Muslim women.
Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) also said in emails that that it would kill all Bangladeshi “anti-Islam atheist” bloggers. Journalists and bloggers called the email outrageous.
“They are asking women journalists to leave their jobs and stay at home. It seems that they are on the path to issue identical diktats to all working women in Bangladesh. They want the women to stay at home as puppets,” said Shammi Haque, a Dhaka blogger, who has received several death threats from the Islamists and now lives under police protection.
The latest threat highlights the challenges Bangladesh’s press faces from all directions, said Sumit Galhotra, Asia program research associate for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based worldwide press freedom advocacy group.
Bangladeshi intelligence and security authorities claim that there is a link between radical Muslim organization Ansarullah Bangla and Middle East and funding from Middle East to such organizations are under investigations.
“Those radicals we arrested had been working in gulf countries or their relatives had been working in gulf. There is a possible linkage of these radicals with Middle East, particularly gulf”, said one investigation officer.
