Campaigners fear media crackdown under PM Sheikh Hasina after suspension order upheld
Dhaka
The only newspaper of Bangladesh’s main opposition party has stopped publishing after a government suspension order was upheld, stoking fears about media freedom in the south Asian nation.
Campaigners and foreign governments including the US have long expressed worries about efforts by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to silence criticism and what they see as creeping authoritarianism.
The Dainik Dinkal, a broadsheet Bengali-language newspaper, has been a vital voice of the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) for more than three decades. It employs hundreds of journalists and press workers and covers news stories that the mainstream newspapers, most of which are controlled by pro-government businesspeople, rarely do.
This includes the frequent arrests of BNP activists and what the party says are thousands of fake cases against its supporters.
The newspaper said the Dhaka district authorities ordered the shutdown on 26 December, but it continued to publish after lodging an appeal at the press council headed by a top high court judge.
“The council rejected our appeal yesterday (Sunday), upholding the district magistrate’s order to stop our publication,” Shamsur Rahman Shimul Biswas, the managing editor of the newspaper, told AFP.
