E-Bangladesh

Recently the Election Commission (EC) announced that the local government polls in four city corporations and nine municipalities will be held on August 4 this year. The caretaker government will relax the Emergency Powers Rules (EPR) in respective areas to allow campaign processions and rallies.

In the mean-time one of nation’s major political parties BNP has already rejected the schedule for local-body elections and its arch rival Awami League (AL) also termed it a ‘conspiratorial and farcical move’. Jatiya Party (Ershad), one of the other small parties welcomed the decision to hold city corporation and municipality polls before parliamentary elections and urged the government to declare the schedule for Upazila elections too. It looks like the scheduled local government election will remain controversial to some political parties and individuals.

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Last year, my attention was brought to a disturbing news report published in several dailies about young journalist Zahid Al Amin being attacked while performing his journalistic duties. Zahid, a reporter of Bangladesh Observer and Assistant Editor of Our Time, has been waiting for justice for nearly three years.

On 21 July 2005, he went to Chittagong Medical College Hospital on an assignment to cover the news of acid victim Hosne Ara, another casualty of dowry, who succumbed to her injuries (allegedly) for lack of proper treatment after she was admitted in the hospital. Zahid was trying to investigate her story, starting with the hospital’s role in dealing her case. In course of performing his duties, he himself became a victim of assault perpetrated by some intern doctors and staff members, causing him several injuries. As an immediate response to it, Chittagong Union of Journalists (CUJ) and Chittagong Metropolitan Union of Journalists (CMUJ) condemned the attack on Zahid and demanded justice by submitting a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong. Nationwide, other journalists’ forums also joined in and voiced their condemnations demanding proper inquiry into the matter. Zahid himself filed a criminal case with the police in this connection (The Bangladesh Observer, March 19 & July 22, 2006, Daily Suprobhat Bangladesh, April 4 & July 22, 2006, Amader Shomoy, March 4 & 23, 2006, Daily Janakantha, July 21, August 13, & Jaijaidin, August 9, 2007). Till today, there has not been any substantial progress to report, except that two years after the incident - Mohammad Abdur Rob, the Metropolitan Magistrate, last month ordered the Police to further investigate the matter (The Daily Star, Feb. 27, 2008).

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