Another day, another attack on the press in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, this latest attack was brutal and the target was a journalist working far away from Dhaka, the capital, which meant he had little or no protection and institutional support for doing the most difficult job of holding the powerful accountable. The horrific death Golam Rabbani Nadim met with last week in Jamalpur’s Bakshiganj upazila was the  result of merciless beating by some musclemen allegedly on the orders of the local union parishad chairman Mahmudul Alam.  Nadim was attacked the very day he learnt that a court had exonerated him from defamation charges brought under the most dreaded Digital Security Act (DSA) by chairman Mahmudul Alam for publishing a story about the latter’s alleged bigamy. In many conservative societies,  bigamy is considered a crime - or at the least moral degradation. UP chairmen are entrusted with the responsibility of issuing character certificates to residents within their ...

On November 2, 2022, as the world observes the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists for the ninth year, it's only proper to remind our readers a sad but glaring fact about how Bangladesh is doing in this regard. Just two days before, a Dhaka court,  for the 93rd time , granted the Rapid Action Battalion's (Rab) request for more time to complete their investigation into the killings of journalist couple Sagar-Runi. Though no one should ever foretell any judicial action, in this case, people's presumption that the investigating official would certainly hit a century in seeking time extensions should be forgiven. It is also the 10th anniversary of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. Ironically, more than 10 years have passed since those ghastly double murders took place on February 11, 2012. It's not just the murders of Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi that remain unsolved; according to the Unesco Observat...