bdnews24.com’s Senior Editor Amanullah Kabir has died at the age of 71.
He passed away at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University around 12:45am on Wednesday, his son Shat-Il-Kabir told bdnews24.com.
The senior journalist’s body will be taken to the National Press Club for a Namaz-e-Janaza at 11:00am. He will be buried at his home village in Jamalpur.
The veteran journalist was suffering from diabetes and other complications. Liver-damaging toxins were also found in test, his family earlier said citing physicians.
He was admitted to Dhaka Central International Medical College in Mohammadpur due to the illness two weeks ago. Later he was shifted to Ibn Sina Hospital in Dhanmondi and then to the BSMMU when his health deteriorated, his daughter Shovan Kabir told bdnews24.com.
He had suffered a massive heart attack three years ago.
“Regardless of the fact that many of us differed with him about interpretations of certain chapters of our national political history, we will remember him for his honesty, integrity and commitment to the profession of journalism,” bdnews24.com Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi wrote in a Facebook post.
“He opposed the communal forces and hated those who hobnobbed with them.
“Kabir Bhai lived a life that required restraining himself from availing all the privileges for an influential journalist that he once was in this country, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. We are proud to have been colleagues in the last chapter of his life,” Khalidi said in his tribute.
Born on Jan 24, 1947 in Jamalpur, Kabir worked with both Bangla and English news outlets over the course of his career.
A 1968 MA from Dhaka University, Amanullah Kabir rose through ranks to head the newsroom at The New Nation, then a major newspaper, in the 1980s and became the first news editor at The Daily Star founded by the late SM Ali.
In late 1991, he joined The Telegraph as Executive Editor, was part of the launch team as executive editor at The Independent, owned by Beximco, before becoming the Managing Director and Chief Editor at state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha when BNP was in power.
He was founding Editor of Amar Desh, then owned by the BNP’s Mosaddek Ali Falu.
The last leg — more than five years — of his nearly five-decade career was spent at bdnews24.com.
In the 1980s and 90s, he was elected president and secretary general of undivided unions of journalists, serving both the Dhaka Union of Journalists and the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists.
He was arguably the strongest voice for media freedom during the rule of military dictator Lt Gen HM Ershad.
Amanullah Kabir authored books such as ‘The Struggling Democracy of Bangladesh’, ‘Nodi o Ondhokarer Roop’, ‘Mukhoshbarhi’, ‘Nistabdhatar Matam’, and ‘Zilay Zilay Bhasa Andolan o Onyanyo Tothyo’.– bdnews24.com
