News Desk :
Five UN human rights experts expressed deep concern at the failure of the Bangladeshi authorities to complete an investigation on the murders of journalists Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi and bring the killers to justice, even after ten years.
The experts in a joint statement on Friday said, “A decade after the killing of the two journalists, there is still no justice as a result of an horrific and prevalent culture of reprieve in the country,”
“When crimes against journalists go unpunished, they give courage the perpetrators and encourage more attacks, threats and killings with the intention of intimidating the media into silence. We see those profoundly worrying signs in Bangladesh,” said the experts.
It may be mentioned that at least 15 journalists have been killed in
Bangladesh in the past decade; the statement said the incidents appear to be rarely investigated or prosecuted.
In some cases, local authorities are thought to be directly implicated in the attacks, it also read, adding that the allegations brought to the attention of Bangladesh government by the UN experts often have gone unanswered.
No response was ever received from the government to a letter sent by UN experts following the murder of Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi in 2012, it added.
The special rapporteurs and independent experts, who are part of the UN Human Rights Council, include Irene Khan, Mary Lawlor, Clément N Voule, Nils Melzer and Morris Tidball-Binz.
In the joint statement, the experts also recalled the death of writer Mushtaq Ahmed in custody in February 2021 following nine months in pre-trial detention on charges under the Digital Security Act (DSA) for publishing an article criticising the government’s pandemic response.
The authorities failed to conduct an independent and egalitarian investigation into his death in custody, despite the concerns of his family that Mushtaq tortured during the time that in police custody, and that there was a three-hour delay in admitting him to hospital once he fell sick, the statement read.
Eventually, the experts added “Journalism should not carry the intuitive risk of being attacked, daunt or killed with impunity but unluckily that is the current reality for many journalists, human rights defenders and other members of civil society in Bangladesh,”.
