Md Wahiduzzaman : On 16 June 1974, the Awami League government led father of PM and several other senior ministers and MPS of current government, decided to shut down all print media except two government run newspapers. In addition government took over the ownership of two leading but privately owned newspapers ( Daily Ittefaq and Daily Observer) and kept them running as government mouth pieces.
Since then 16th June used to be observed by journalists in Bangladesh as black day as thousands of jouralists lost their livelihood instantly. However as the years passed, younger generation journalists choose to forget 16th June events and 16th June is no longer a black days. At least if you see the mainstream media in Bangladesh, you can hardly see any mention of it.
For the recent time, there is no dobt that if one looks deep into the facts, media suffered much more at the hands of Awami League. Even when Awami League was in opposition, media was not immune from acts of aggression by Awami League leadership.
Not taking lesson from 16th june events, when Awami came back to power next time (present time), it decided to shut down four very popular government run weeklies and dailies. Although financial problems was shown by the government as the main reason, it was very clear that the closure was done simply out of revenge on the journalists working on those outlets. Contradictory PM had to settle some score with Nirmal Sen for his famous headline, ‘Swavik Mrittur Guarantee Chai…’ or Shahadat Chowdhury for being supportive of popular President Ziaur Rahman.
Awami League government, after coming back to power (for the recent time) , in addition to print media, it had to deal with electronic media. Keeping up its tradition on, government imposed a harsh gag on all electron media, preventing them from inviting guests critical of government’s acts. In quick succession it closed down two mainstream TV channels and lots of newspaper, arrested their editors, is currently torturing them under custody and some of them run away from country.
Even under her long hard democracy , Sheik Hasina government also did not hesitate to impose draconian rules like blocking Youtube, esnipe, facebbok. Events like a police officers fist fight with an elderly photojournalist, or arrest of a stinger, etc all are going like routine work without protest against those or without criticism.