Dhaka/Geneva: Suspected drug smugglers shot dead Bangladeshi journalist Mohiuddin Sarker Nayeem (28) on April 14, 2022. He was targeted by gunmen in the Pachora area near Hyderabadnagar at midnight and later succumbed to injuries in the hospital.
Lately, four individuals have been arrested by the police suspecting their involvement with Mohiuddin’s cold-blooded murder.
His family members claim that the Cumilla-based journalist used to report on the drug trafficking in his locality and that the Bangladesh police forces received a lot of input from Mohiuddin about the movement of drug peddlers.
Son of a retired policeman, Mohiuddin was associated with the local Bengali newspaper Dainik Cumillar Dak and for some time he also worked for the Ananda television news channel.
Local journalists demonstrated their anger against the murder in front of Cumilla Press Club yesterday, demanding exemplary punishment for the killers.
Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), the global body for media safety and rights, condemned the murder of the Bangladeshi journalist and demanded exemplary punishments for the perpetrators.
In an earlier statement, the PEC expressed its serious concern over the sharp rise in journalists killed across the world this year.
“So far in 2022, globally we have lost 45 journalists to assailants. This is a dramatic rise and very worrying as the number of journalists killed last year was only 79. The war in Ukraine, the conflict triggered by Russia, has claimed 15 victims among media workers and over 20 journalists sustained injuries. On the other hand, Mexico witnesses the murder of 9 journalists to date,” said PEC president Blaise Lempen.
PEC’s south Asia representative Nava Thakuria lamented that a young Bengali scribe had to lose his life on the eve of Bangladesh New Year.
Bangladesh’s eastern neighbour Myanmar has also lost one journalist (Pu Tui Dim) to military atrocities, whereas its western neighbour India (Rohit Kumar Biswal, Sudhir Saini and Juned Khan Pathan) and also Pakistan (Hasnain Shah, Murtaza Shar and Athar Mateen) witnessed the murder of three scribes each since 1 January 2022. However, other South Asian nations like Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet (China), Sri Lanka and Maldives have evaded any murder of media workers to date this year.
– global bihari bureau
