Police in Bangladesh’s capital have arrested a journalist known for her strong reporting against official corruption in the South Asian country, where journalists are often threatened with dire consequences for professional work.
Rozina Islam, a senior reporter with the country’s leading Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper, was confined for more than five hours till late on Monday in a room of a personal assistant of the secretary of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Health, her younger sister Sabina Parvin said.
A secretary is the top bureaucrat of a ministry. The room was inside the Bangladesh Secretariat, the downtown Dhaka premises where almost all government ministries are.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Islam was then handed over to police and faces charges under the Penal Code and Official Secrets Act for the theft and photographing of sensitive state documents, said Harun-or-Rashid, an additional deputy commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police.
Yesterday morning, Islam was produced before a court in Dhaka, where police sought that she be remanded to their custody for five days to be interrogated.
According to the case documents, Islam is alleged to have used her mobile phone without permission to photograph documents related to Bangladesh’s negotiations for buying and collecting COVID-19 vaccines while she waited inside a room of a bureaucrat involved with the process.
The charges she faces carry up to 14 years in prison and the death penalty if she is convicted, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement.
Maidul Islam Prodhan, a spokesman for the ministry, said that Islam took photos of “important” documents.
“She was also taking away some documents. An additional secretary and a policeman challenged her at the time,” he said.
“Later, the policewomen were called in,” he said.
Islam’s colleagues at the Prothom Alo said that she was at the ministry for professional reasons, while many questioned the illegal confinement of a journalist inside the room of a bureaucrat for more than five hours.
Islam’s family said she was physically and mentally harassed during the confinement.
Video and images that went viral on social media showing a physical confrontation against Islam could not be verified.
Islam is known for her reporting on corruption involving ministries, including the health ministry.
Several of her recent stories drew attention to the millions of dollars spent procuring emergency health equipment.
Journalists groups in Bangladesh and the Committee to Protect Journalists demanded her release.
“We are deeply alarmed that Bangladesh officials detained a journalist and filed a complaint under a draconian colonial-era law that carries ridiculously harsh penalties,” Committee to Protect Journalists senior Asia researcher Aliya Iftikhar said.
“Bangladesh police and authorities should recognize that Rozina Islam is a journalist whose work is a public service and should immediately drop the case against her and allow her to go free,” Iftikhar said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
DISPUTED WATERS: The Philippines accused China of building an artificial island on Sabina Shoal, while Beijing said Manila was trying to mislead the global community The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure Beijing does not carry out reclamation activities at Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Reef), its spokesperson said yesterday. The PCG on Saturday said it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship’s deployment in the middle of last month, the PCG said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped
The most powerful solar storm in more than two decades struck Earth on Friday, triggering spectacular celestial light shows from Tasmania to the UK — and threatening possible disruptions to satellites and power grids as it persists into the weekend. The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun — came just after 4pm GMT, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. It was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm — the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged
Experts have long warned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI) going rogue, but a new research paper suggests it is already happening. AI systems, designed to be honest, have developed a troubling skill for deception, from tricking human players in online games of world conquest to hiring humans to solve “prove-you’re-not-a-robot” tests, a team of researchers said in the journal Patterns on Friday. While such examples might appear trivial, the underlying issues they expose could soon carry serious real-world consequences, said first author Peter Park, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specializing in AI existential safety. “These