Bangladesh Shuts Down Newspaper Run by Main Opposition Party

The Dainik Dinkal employed hundreds of journalists and press workers, and had been running for over three decades.

New Delhi: Bangladesh has shut down the opposition party’s major newspaper, the Dainik Dinkal, after a government suspension order was upheld by a watchdog. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s only mouthpiece has now stopped printing, AFP reported.

The newspaper employed hundreds of journalists and press workers, and had been running for over three decades. Often, according to AFP, the Dainik Dinkal would carry news on the arrests of BNP workers and the allegedly false cases against them.

The Bangladesh Press Council on Sunday (February 19) upheld a shutdown order brought in by the government in December last year. The order, according to AFP, had said that the printing permit of the newspaper was cancelled after it violated the country’s printing and publication laws. The Council referred to Tarique Rahman – the acting chief of BNP and the paper’s publisher – as a convicted criminal, and said he had moved abroad without handing over his responsibilities to anyone else.

“The council rejected our appeal yesterday [on Sunday], upholding the district magistrate’s order to stop our publication,” Shamsur Rahman Shimul Biswas, managing editor of the newspaper, told AFP. He added that Rahman now lives in London and had resigned from the paper and handed over responsibilities, but the authorities did not accept these changes.

“This shutdown is all part of the government crackdown on dissenting voices and freedom of speech,” Biswas said.

Dhaka-based journalists too have come out against the decision, with two unions saying the decision was a “reflection of the repression of opposition voices”. They also staged a protest in the city.

The 2022 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders ranked Bangladesh at 162, worse than Russia (155) and Afghanistan (156).