{"id":11086,"date":"2022-05-13T10:46:05","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T14:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idavox.com\/?p=11086"},"modified":"2022-05-17T06:00:29","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T10:00:29","slug":"bangladesh-govt-hates-journalist-shafiqul-islam-kajol-and-wants-to-destroy-him-dont-let-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idavox.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/13\/bangladesh-govt-hates-journalist-shafiqul-islam-kajol-and-wants-to-destroy-him-dont-let-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh Gov’t Hates Journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol And Wants to Destroy Him; Don’t Let Them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a society we speak often about journalists who are threatened and even killed when they are in hostile land, but when that land is your very home it may take the support from those outside to prevail. Shafiqul Islam Kajol needs that support.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Dr. Lisa Sharlach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For over three decades, photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol has documented political strife and social inequalities in Dhaka, Bangladesh\u2019s capital, both for daily newspapers and for the news magazine he edits, Pokkhokal<\/em>.  A political activist himself, Kajol\u2019s photos are often close-ups of ordinary people on the streets striking, protesting, or coping with catastrophe.  Among his accomplishments are a documentary and book, \u201cUnsung Ballads,\u201d featuring interviews of the now-stigmatized war heroines \u2013 mass rape survivors \u2013 of the 1971 independence war from Pakistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On March 10, 2020, Kajol left his office after work \u2013 and was kidnapped by an elite security force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). \u00a0Kajol\u2019s wife, Julia Ferdousi Nayan, filed a report the next day, and held a press conference on the 13th<\/sup>. \u00a0That same day, Amnesty International issued an \u201curgent action\u201d on Kajol\u2019s behalf titled \u201cEditor Feared Victim of Enforced Disappearance.\u201d\u00a0 (Nearly 600 people had been \u201cdisappeared\u201d by Bangladesh\u2019s security forces since 2009, according to a 2021 Human Rights Watch report, and the fates of 86 are still unknown). \u00a0Kajol\u2019s kidnappers held him bound and gagged in a secret cell, tortured him for 53 days, and finally abandoned him in a field near the Indian border where a patrol found him on the night of the 3rd<\/sup> of May, World Press Freedom Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is limited media freedom in Bangladesh today;  in October of 2018 the legislature passed the Digital Security Act (DSA) that inflicts severe penalties for a variety of broad, vaguely-worded transgressions. For instance, Section 25 permits a fine and\/or jail term of up to three years for a person who \u201cintentionally or knowingly transmits, publishes or propagates any data-information which he knows to be offensive, false or threatening in order to annoy, insult, humiliate or malign a person.\u201d  Serial offenders would receive a sentence of up to five years.  Moreover, Section 31 of the DSA specifies that a first-time offender could be jailed for up to 7 years for publishing or transmitting online anything \u201cthat creates enmity, hatred or hostility among different classes or communities of the society, or destroys communal harmony, or creates unrest or disorder, or deteriorates or advances to deteriorate the law and order situation.\u201d  A second offense could result in a jail term of a decade.  The Awami League, the party that rules Bangladesh through a decreasingly credible series of electoral victories, has manipulated the overly-broad wording of the DSA to silence critics, including Shafiqul Islam Kajol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kajol\u2019s Facebook posts and messages came to the attention of the authorities, who charged him under the DSA with defamation, indecency, promoting false information, and disturbing public order.  On March 9, 10, and 11, 2020, M.P. Saifuzzaman Shikhor and two members of a wing of the Awami League had filed charges against Kajol and some three dozen others under the DSA for posting and circulating on Facebook an \u201coffensive\u201d and \u201cdefamatory\u201d report.  It claimed that certain Awami League politicians had been involved in a prostitution enterprise allegedly run out of the Westin Hotel by Shamima Noor Papia, the disgraced former head of the Awami League\u2019s women\u2019s wing, now jailed for arms sales and facing charges of money laundering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kajol\u2019s troubles did not end when the border patrol found him on May 3.\u00a0 The police arbitrarily arrested him;\u00a0 then, despite the raging coronavirus pandemic, put him in indefinite pre-trial detention for the three charges against him under the DSA. Probably due to pressure upon the government about his plight from both within Bangladesh and internationally, Kajol left jail on bail on December 25, 2020. Although reunited with his family, he suffers from PTSD and is not permitted to work. Because of lack of funds, his son had to withdraw from college.\u00a0 The courts will soon try Kajol for two of the DSA charges against him, and it is possible he may spend many years in jail.\u00a0 According to Kajol, \u201cI walk with my family in the middle of life and death.\u00a0 There is no such thing as freedom of speech in this country.\u00a0 There is no such thing as rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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