𝐈𝐒 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐆𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓’𝐒 𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐏𝐈𝐄𝐂𝐄?
Bloomberg’s coverage of Bangladesh over the last 15 years has simply been the worst among the foreign media. In fact, I’d say it was damaging as it didn’t accurately inform readers interested in the country; rather, it misled readers into thinking that the economy was firing on all cylinders under the Sheikh Hasina-led government. Almost all its reports — by its Bangladesh stringer Mr Arun Devnath —were nothing but Bangladesh Awami League press releases/CRI talking points dressed up as cold hard news on the Bangladesh economy. Mind you, it was Bloomberg' coverage by him that embedded the narrative that Bangladesh was an economic over-performer under Hasina. What Mr Julhas Alam is/was to Associated Press, as Netra News showed, Mr Devnath is to Bloomberg, although the latter operates with more guile.
This week, Bloomberg’s reportage has taken on a menacing turn and we must call out the publication unqualifiedly. Over the past 15 years, Bloomberg was silent on Bangladesh’s steep democratic backsliding and shabby human rights record. I don’t remember seeing any strong report on Bloomberg on the past three rigged elections, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and judicial harassment against the Awami League’s opponents unlike The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Financial Times and so on. I don’t remember seeing any report on the draconian Digital Security Act/Cyber Security Act or the shrinking press freedom. Basically, Bloomberg’s conscience was put in the bottle seeing the stellar economic growth and the bridges and tunnels and metro.
But after Hasina’s ouster, Bloomberg magically grew a conscience. This week, it published a long-form on the rise of Islamic extremism after Hasina fled based on bogus accounts and poor attribution.
If you want a TL;DR, the report basically gave journalistic legitimacy to all the fake news that the Indian media have been spouting since the 5th of August. Let’s count the number of ways how the Bloomberg correspondent Kai Schultz — who, by the way, is based in India — presumably with the help of Mr Devnath established the narrative that minorities are unsafe in a Hasina-less Bangladesh:
1. The report starts with an account of the controversial ICT prosecutor Ms Tureen Afroz, who, apparently, was forced to shave off her head for not wearing hijab and was tortured in her home for days soon after the fall of the Hasina government. Such a big development and all mainstream Bangladeshi media seems to have missed it! If you Google, you’ll see that the Indian media reported extensively on this alleged incident. I watched a few video interviews that Ms Afroz gave to Indian channels and her front door doesn’t look like a group of boys broke through it. And her head doesn’t look like it was shaven at all. Here, I must mention that Ms Afroz was in the news not too long ago for evicting her mother and brother from their own home and for being removed from the kangaroo court that was the ICT for professional misconduct.
2. The report says that “terrorist networks like the Islamic State have made advances in recent years” without any attribution and that the Israel war provides a “ripe environment for recruitment”.
3. The report made it a point to mention that “Hasina was praised by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular for keeping Islamists at bay and providing a moderate foil to Pakistan, where terrorist groups have found safe haven for decades”.
4. The report states that “lawlessness rules Dhaka, where embassies are running with reduced staff, teenagers have helped direct traffic and police stations are burned-out shells”. This could have been passed off as dated information had the report not included the army chief’s desired timeline for election. Bloomberg sure had access to the current situation, which couldn’t be farther from what it stated in the report.
5. The report says that “thousands of Hindus have already tried to flee into a sensitive sliver of India that borders Tibet and Myanmar” without any attribution. India’s BSF has already denied this but never let facts get in the way of a good story.
6. The report says there have been “months of curfews” in Bangladesh. There was a curfew for just a few days and not months. Seriously, Bloomberg, this is just desperate.
7. No, Hasina didn’t ban Jamaat after the Holey attack in 2016, she banned the party just three days before her ouster.
8. The report says masked men set Hindu temples ablaze while conveniently ignoring the fact that Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamic-minded parties and common people kept watch on places of worship of minorities in the days after Hasina fled.
9. The report also conveniently ignores the fact that Jamaat was as much an Awami League ally as it was a BNP ally.
10. The report says “For Hasina’s supporters, the vigilantism of the past few weeks is evidence that the prime minister’s tough approach to governance was necessary” — justifying her autocratic ways.
11. The report interviewed the widow of Faruk Molla, the vice-president of Shariatpur’s Charkumaria Union’s Swechasebak League. He along with his younger brother were hacked to death. His other brother is a local union parishad member. The family has strong Awami League ties but the report says Faruk “wasn’t intimately affiliated with the Awami League”. In local media reports, Faruk’s brother, who is the local UP member, did not categorically state which party the assailants belonged to, but Bloomberg definitively says those were BNP men.
12. To nicely tie up this concocted narrative, Kai Schultz returns to Tureen Afroz, who likens present-day Bangladesh to the “fight for independence from Pakistan in the 1970s”. And what happened at that time? Well, the report mentions that “10 million people — mostly in the Hindu minority — fled to neighbouring India”.
Here, I must say that the Chief Adviser GOB press wing acted utterly irresponsibly by declining to give any comment to Bloomberg for the report. They should have conveyed the government’s position in no uncertain terms on this false Indian narrative as BNP’s secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has. This is an extremely defamatory report and the government must strongly object to this.
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Man, if Indian stablishment doesn't stop with their anti BD propaganda campaign on the international arena using various soft influences and indian journalists and academics in positions (which is starting to hurt us), animosity will increase significantly.
@LeonBlack08 @Bengal71
www.thedailystar.net
