If truth lies buried, what’s next?

The quest for perfection tantamount to quest for truth and justice in the imperfect world we live in. And it often ends in gnawing pains. The media and the judiciary of Bangladesh are in great pains for seeking some semblance of perfection in righting the apparent wrongs. So, what’s next?

Bangladesh’s press freedom is under microscopic scrutiny in the global media outlets and among human rights watchdogs. Along with the raucous critiquing of press freedom muffling, international media is abuzz with other critical aspects of the country’s governing mechanism; many opaque exhortation accompanying such critiquing to the necessity of holding a credible general election sooner.

Much of the grind for this latest splurge on Bangladesh’s press freedom comes from what one may call the ‘Star Saga’ that has been roiling since the Daily Star Editor and Publisher, Mahfuz Anam, strated facing 79 cases filed against him in 53 districts since February 9; of which 17 are motions seeking to tangle him in sedition charges.

The total defamation compensation sought by the complainants of these cases, who’re mostly ruling party hirelings, amounts to Tk 132,811 crores.

Global observers may feel stung by such outlandish, stupefying and ridiculous persecutory tactic, but the madness is the product of a calculated method. The flurry of cases stem from The Daily Star’s publication of a number of corruption-related stories almost a decade ago, that had accused incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, then in prison, of material impropriety. How dare?

What rebounded with a bang a decade later is an atavism not unknown to Bangladesh’s political culture. The published stories are branded as false now because they came from the Armed Forces Intelligence (DGFI) who had had under their custody many senior leaders of the Awami League to confess about such wrong doings by Sheikh Hasina and many of her cohorts.

The Daily Star, however, was not alone to publish such stories, which got circulated in most of the print and electronic media at that time. The axe had slammed on the Star due to Mahfuz Anam’s confession in a talk show on February 3 that printing the DGFI-provided story without any independent verification ‘was a bad editorial judgment.’ Here you go. Telling truth is a serious crime in Bangladesh. The DGFI- provided stories were true then, and became false after the people who’re alleged to have committed such crimes came to power. The Star editor is caught from the hind for being candid about his mistake of the hind.

Curiously, the person or the persons whose fame is alleged to have been slighted by the stories is not suing the Star editor. Rather, the storm surge of attacks, backlashes and the bruising remonstrations came from the PM and many of her party leaders, offering the necessary fuse and the ruse to an army of sycophants to swoon on the Star editor who’s been rumored for long enough to have acted behind the scene to bring to power the army-backed government in January 2007.

Some reports even claim: “He’d brayed in public and private over his role in whisking the army-backed regime in power.” Whether he was involved or not in such a scheme needs exhaustive probation. And that’s not what bothers us the most for now. Rather, the indignant pique of the PM in seeking resignation in public of a privately-owned newspaper editor causes our stomach to get upset and cringe a bit.

Fact is: that post 1/11 unconstitutional regime has been exonerated from committing the crimes of sedition—by removing a constitutionally prescribed regime—by the government of Sheikh Hasina. Future will dictate whether that itself constitutes a crime or not. To the contrary, The Daily Star simply acted as the messenger to carry the message of the army-backed government.

Besides, it’s not a tad irony to see only a single newspaper from among the many getting clobbered while others move about with refreshing gait and complacent chuckling.

Now come to the legal correctness of the cases. The allegations against the Star editor and publisher relates to defamation, for now, until any sedition charge is allowed to get initiated by the courts for which innumerable prayers lay pending. Did the Star really commit sedition by publishing those stories?

Sedition is defined as covert or overt conducts that constitute a revulsion and/or an insurrection against the established order. The established order in 2007-2008 was an unconstitutional, military-backed regime, against which the Star didn’t publish anything. Rather, the stories for which the Star is being punished came from the hive of that established order, the DGFI.

Another aspect of this saga is the time chosen to expose the Star editor. The media has been under a reckless, vitriolic stampede of the government for too long; starting from banning of the Amar Desh, the Diganta TV, arrest of Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman, and many other incidents that followed. The Daily Star is otherwise considered a paper not kind to the so called nationalist-Islamist compact belonging to the BNP-Jamat hues. So, why the Daily Star is the villain?

One plausible explanation could be that the Star is very much involved in the civil society polarizations that had played bold, stop-gap, palliative role during the political and constitutional interregnums leading to the protracted pre-election tugs of wars. Sources say another such election had become unavoidable once again under the sullied image of a regime that’d failed to obtain the stamp of legality due to the January 2014 election being worthless, unacceptable and insignificant to domestic and international stakeholders alike.

Such a hypothesis does have some verb to deserve a thought or two. For, of all the civic society stalwarts—from Dr. Mohammad Yunus through Dr. Kamal Hossain, Mahmudur Rahman Manna to the latest vicim Mahfuz Anam – only a tiny bunch remained afloat to date; only to tether at the verge of extinction, including Mahfuz Anam.

As they’re found yelping to catch a whiff of fresh breath in the run up to another general election, they needed to get clipped. In the process, the military establishment too got a trenchant message purveyed into their body politic, penetrating in like the unseen rays of an x-ray.

Nonetheless, the vicious onslaughts on Mahfuz Anam are an attack on the free conscience of the nation and the flow of free information. Media’s main job is to capture the current, not to chase its origin which lay deeper, beyond public grasp. It’s often the politicians who stir the avalanche from that unseen world and blame the media just to conceal their detestable sins. If the 1/11 was a crime, the criminals are those who caused it and who’d reaped its benefits ever since. The media and the judiciary are the two last resorts for a nation to fall back onto in quest of exposure and justice. These two veritable pillars of the nation now stand splotched and paralyzed. No wonder it’s a crime galore everywhere and the governance is in an irretrievable shamble. Such a breakdown of the nation’s vital nerves is bound to mortally injure the silent majority wailing from the fringe.

Shahid Islam is an acclaimed international author and former senior editorial staffer of The Daily Star and the Weekly Holiday.

Source: Weekly Holiday