How Sheikh Hasina suffocated the media in Bangladesh

When Faisal Mahmud, a reporter in Dhaka working with Al Jazeera, reached a site of student protests around Dhaka University on July 17, he was met with hostility. 

“They (the students) did not let me inside the area at first, saying no journalist was allowed,” he said. “They let me in eventually after finding out where I work, but most other journalists were pushed away. The anger against the media was very high. Seeing how the mainstream media covered the protest fermented their anger, giving them a common enemy and motivating them to be on the streets even more.” 

Students told Mahmud they felt “betrayed” by how they had been villainised by the media.

News media in Bangladesh has been less of a pillar of democracy and more a political tool since the country’s inception in 1971. Four years later, it became a one-party socialist state under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was known as Father of the Nation Bangabandhu (friend of Bengal). Many newspapers were banned and civil liberties were restricted at this point. Rahman was assassinated on August 15, 1975 as part of a military coup. 

Over the next two decades, Bangladesh saw periods of authoritarian rule, martial law, and multiple political uprisings. Through all this, mainstream news media struggled to exercise its right to free speech. Although towing the government line was standard practice for local media, press censorship became stronger than ever from 2015 onwards, under the Bangladesh Awami League leader (and Rahman’s daughter), Sheikh Hasina. 

Once hailed as a democratic icon, Hasina’s second premiership began in 2009 and was soon mired in corruption scandals, allegations of abuse of power, tyrannical control over media, and state-sponsored violence. Her tenure ended when she fled the country on August 5 this year, after millions took to the streets in Dhaka to demand Prime Minister Hasina’s resignation. Until the point when Hasina went into exile, most of mainstream media, particularly TV news, remained subservient to her. 

“The Bangladeshi media has invariably been deeply sodomised by the government,” said Sumon Rahman, professor of media studies at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. “There is no media. All the media houses are propaganda and barring a couple, there are no variations. The ones that are independent cannot carry their voices that far and wide.”

Over 15 journalists and editors confirmed to Newslaundry that it was commonplace for officers from the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Bangladesh’s Intelligence agency, to ring up editors of media houses with instructions on what should be published and what should be censored. 

The Daily Star and Prothom Alo are known to be the only independent newspapers in Bangladesh. They were declared an “enemy” of democracy and the Bangladeshi people by Hasina. Reporters from these newspapers were barred from her office and public events.

Hasina’s press conferences were infamous for being choreographed events that allowed her to bask in tributes lavished upon her by attending journalists, who were cherry-picked by her supporters in mainstream media. Any questions Hasina received were usually framed in a way that gave her an opportunity to criticise those in opposition. “It is a known fact that journalists who attend these press conferences [organised by the government] are partisan, but in the last few years, the situation went beyond that,” said journalist Kamal Ahmed, who used to be an editor with Prothom Alo. “The press conferences were managed in such a way that she [Hasina] got only favourable questions. But it went so far that the journalists stopped asking questions altogether. All they did was praise her or provoke her to attack opposing or dissenting voices.”

This could be seen in the way TV news and some prominent pro-Hasina newspapers covered the student protests that began in response to a decision announced by Bangladesh High Court on June 5, to reintroduce a job quota that would reserve 30 percent of civil servant jobs for descendants of freedom fighters. Students from six universities started a peaceful protest against the order, arguing that the quota would only serve the dominant Awami League.