BBC stringer killed in bomb attack

A journalist for the daily New Age and stringer for the Bengali service of the BBC World Service Manik Shaha, was killed when a home-made bomb was thrown at him at Khulna in the south-west.

Eight journalists have been killed in this part of Bangladesh in the past seven years. He is the first journalist in the world to be murdered in 2004.

Shaha died instantly when the bomb was thrown by unknown assailants who stopped the rickshaw in which he was returning home from covering a meeting of the opposition Awami League, via the press club of which he was president for several years. He was decapitated by the bomb. The bombers managed to escape but several people witnessed the attack. Police were called but made no immediate statement.

Reporters Without Borders and the Bangladesh Centre for Development, Journalism and Communication (BCDJC) both expressed their horror at the murder of Shaha. The two press freedom organisations called on the government, in particular the interior ministry, to take all possible steps to investigate the killing and punish the perpetrators.

Shaha's colleagues questioned by the BCDJC said the journalist knew his life was in danger. He had received death threats by telephone a few months earlier.

A former correspondent for the daily Sangbad in Khulna, Shaha recently told the bureau chief of the BBC World Service in Dhaka that he felt himself to be under threat. He had been writing about the illegal activities of armed Maoist groups and local criminal gangs.

A delegation from Reporters Without Borders and the BCDJC went to Khulna in March 2002 after the murder of Harun-ur-Rashid, a journalist on the local daily Dainik Purbanchal. The delegation met Shaha, who briefed its members about frequent threats made against the local press by far-left groups, particularly of the Purba Bangla Sharbahara Party (PBSP), which, after years of armed struggle, had really turned themselves into criminal gangs.

Home | Bangladesh Awami League |  Contact Us