Fakir Shah

Saer is one of the few Bangladeshi journalists who has a wikipedia page. He is a journalist for Aljazeera and several western media outlets have published his pieces. So, he has credentials which are unparalleled among Bangladeshi journalists. Since he is working for Aljazeera, an established news outlet, you would have thought that he is a journalist who maintains professionalism when he publishes anything anywhere. But one troubling aspect of the journalism of Saer is that he just publishes his reports without either seeking comment from the accused/the person affected by the reports or failing to mention that he sought comments from those people. 

1 # So the government has identified people who laundered more than 200 crore. The question I have is why they are fixated on 200 crore? How did they make the decision that they would not go below 200 crore? How come 200 crore becomes the magic figure? My guess is that the government decided not to go below 200 crore as if they decided to go below, there were chances that certain government officials would be exposed as money launderers. And lots of current government officials would get caught and they certainly do not want that to happen. 

1 # Advisor Asif Mahmud Sajeeb Bhuiyan went to a police station and got a person, who was arrested, released from police custody. The person’s name is Arman Ali who was arrested during a rally of Hizb ut-Tahrir. I have seen a number of people clapping to this incident and they are cheering Asif for this. Is this something good for the country? The simple answer is no. Complex answer is hell no. Asif just intervened in the administration of justice and abused his power as an advisor and a student leader for the SAD movement. You may say Arman Ali is a innocent person. I don’t have any comment on that. He may have been a innocent person, but at the end of the day he was in police custody and police should have take the decision whether to release him or charge him as it is their duty to decide. By intervening Asif just created a bad example.

Recently, Shafiqul Alam, Press Secretary to the Chief Advisor of the interim government, posted a picture on Facebook of himself throwing dirt into a dustbin featuring a portrait of Sheikh Hasina at the Bangla Academy on the first day of the Ekushey Book Fair. His post faces some criticism from a number of people. One of the people criticising the post is Anu Mohammad, the environmentalist and activist. Now, you may find it difficult to fathom why, of all people, Anu Mohammad would criticize the post. After all, he was constantly criticizing the Hasina government during the last BAL administration and was a thorn in the side of the BAL government. 

Saer is a Bangladeshi journalist working for Al Jazeera. His role during the July uprising is beyond commendable. He inside information via his facebook page informed people at a time when information was scarce. But his stance on press freedom and accusation of setting narrative raise the question - what kind of press freedom and freedom of speech does Saer believe? Recently, Charlotte Jacquemart, a Senior Business Editor for Swiss Public Radio, Switzerland, published an op-ed in the Dhaka Tribune. In the op-ed she questioned the imprisonment of a number of journalists in Bangladesh. Saer attacked the op-ed and Ms. Jacquemart in a facebook post - 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐨𝐦: 𝐋𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐀𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐚. In the post one of his comments is -