BNP writes letter after rejoinder
Our reply
BNP sent a rejoinder regarding our report headlined "Aug 21 Attack on Hasina, AL Rally: It was Hawa Bhaban Plot" published on October 27. The Daily Star published the rejoinder along with a reply on November 1. In response to our reply, BNP Secretary General Khondkar Delwar Hossain sent another letter to the editor. We publish full text of the letter and our response below:
FULL TEXT OF BNP'S LETTER
(Paragraphs numbered by us)
1. We would like to thank you for printing our rejoinder in your issue of 1st November 2009 in full. However, your response has disappointed us.
2. At the outset, you have described the rejoinder as "rhetorical". This is a judgement that should have best been left to the reader to make. Your effort is aimed at misleading the reader, and that's not in keeping with the high morals of journalism that you claim to espouse. In any case, we were reacting to a rhetorical report in the first place.
3. As regards the content of your response, you have, unfortunately, once again reverted back to fictitious and ill-motivated reporting with the sole aim of tarnishing BNP's image in the mind of your readers.
4. For example, you claim to know for certain that Lutfozzaman Babar, Haris Chowdhury and Abdus Salam Pintu "were the principal actors in the plot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina". You have however breached journalistic ethics and professionalism by failing to provide any specific proof to back your definitive comment, specially, when the whole matter is still under investigation and is sub-judice. Importantly, in doing so, you have maliciously tried to influence the outcome of the whole investigative and the legal process. The country's relevant law stipulates that the accused is presumed to be innocent till his guilt is proven beyond all reasonable doubts. Let the court of law decide the matter. In the meantime, we urge you not take up the role of judge, jury, prosecutor and the punisher upon yourself.
5. You also claim to have "verified independently" the authenticity of your source and yet you deliberately shy away from providing any further details about your source. This is not a demonstration of serious journalism. You have in fact blown to smithereens the credibility of your source, if at all there be any.
6. You reach the lowest level of basic decency when you mention Mr Tarique Rahman as being guilty when you state "facts speak for themselves". What facts are you talking about? It is fictionalism at its worst, as much as it is libellous. On the contrary, every condemnable attempt is being made by the authorities through inhumanely torturing people under police detention, in clear violation of all civilized human behavior, to force them to give false statements implicating others, including Mr Rahman.
7. This is a vile, orchestrated and motivated attempt on your part to poison people's mind about Mr Tarique Rahman, a man who himself had been subjected to Nazi style mental and physical torture while in police custody during the military backed interim administration.
8. Ethically, the least you should do now is offer an unconditional apology to Mr Tarique Rahman.
9. Investigative journalism is all about bringing well proven facts to light. One has to have the professional ability and the personal integrity to do so. Anything less would make the whole effort an exercise in immorality, as is the case here. As a corollary, we ask you to relieve us from the culture of disinformation and misleading journalism. After all, disinformation may have speed, but truth has endurance.
10. It is indeed laughable that you deny your editor's support for the imposition of the state of emergency on 11th January 2007, and the installation of the unelected and undemocratic administration of Fakhruddin two days later.
11. You will be well advised to take a look at television footage of the scenes immediately following the oath taking ceremony of Fakhruddin and his group of Advisers in Bangabhaban on 13th January 2007. The editor is seen blatantly expressing support for what happened two day earlier when he tells television channels "I support this and I will support it even more............"
I do not see any ambiguity here.
12. On 28th January, within a few days of this, at a meeting of senior media representatives with the then Information Adviser, he is reported to have publicly taken credit for bringing this administration to office through his writings. There are credible witnesses who can testify to this. But more importantly, major newspapers of the country carried this in their edition of 29th January.
13. Interestingly, the Daily Star internet edition of 29th January, 2007 has gone missing from its archives. In the language of criminal investigation, this will be called destroying incriminating evidence.
14. The role of your newspaper during those dark days of emergency is known to all. Devoid of any integrity, you had a sustained policy of printing the so called confessions of political leaders, businessmen and others extracted under extreme duress. As is now clear, these "confessions" have all disappeared into the realm of concoctions of the architect of the dark plot. Are you now not equally culpable as abettors to this heinous plot? It is time for you to come out of your selective amnesia.
15. Freedom of the press entails responsibility; it is not a license to kill.
16. What is alarming is that you have not taken any lesson from your past habit of trying to influence events at the dictate of those who have total disregard for democratic values and principles. Your unholy alliance with those forces still appears to be alive. How else can you explain your being privy to "privileged document"? Just in case you have chosen to forget, may we refer to your own news item of 10th June, 2007 captioned 'Hasina should quit politics' where then Awami League Joint Secretary General and now a Presidium member Obaidul Kader is reported to have "confessed" to the Task Force Intelligence during remand of how the present Prime Minister had received money as graft from different businessmen.
17. The Daily Star editor's despise for mass based political parties in Bangladesh in fact has a pattern. Indeed, at a very recent diplomatic social event he described the BNP and the Awami league as the "biggest enemies" of democracy.
18. By doing so he was implicitly making an attempt to resurrect the abortive, and highly criticized, "minus two" formula of Fakhruddin and his military controlled undemocratic administration, and that too to a foreign audience.
19. While making such a damaging and self defeating judgment, he clearly chose to ignore the fact that both these political parties, and their top leadership, enjoy broad support among the masses, as subsequent events have proven. He also forgets that they have been elected, and re-elected, to office with popular mandate. It was no surprise therefore that his remark was met with such stony silence by others present on that occasion.
20. Obviously, your lofty claims to upholding democratic values and the rule of law are all illusive and deceitful.
21. Finally, we strongly feel that it would only be fair that you print this response in full and give it the space you have given your response. The reader must have access to all facts; it is his right to do so, as much as it is your obligation and responsibility to ensure that he does.
(Khondkar Delwar Hossain)
Secretary General
Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP
OUR RESPONSE
(Paragraph numbers refer to paragraphs of Mr Delwar's letter)
1. We are sorry that our response disappointed you. However, it would have been in the fitness of things if you, along with your "disappointment", also mentioned that we made your rejoinder our second lead story on the front page, which no other paper ever did in the history of Bangladeshi journalism.
2. You said we should have left it to our readers to judge whether your rejoinder was "rhetorical" or not. Fair enough. You termed our report "concocted", "libellous", "malicious propaganda", "far-fetched", "fanciful", "heinous fiction", etc. Shouldn't you have left it to the readers to judge as well?
3. You describe our reply as reverting back to "fictitious and ill-motivated reporting with the sole purpose of tarnishing BNP's image". Just as in the original rejoinder, so also now, you fail to point out where our reply is a "fiction". It is never our purpose to tarnish anybody's image. Their own actions do so, we only report them.
4. You say "the matter is still under investigation and is sub-judice". You contradict yourself. If something is under investigation, it cannot be sub-judice. As a lawyer you, of all people, must know it.
We reiterate here that our report was based on authentic and reliable sources, extensive interviews with police officials who investigated the case during the BNP government (but were prevented from pursuing the case properly), caretaker tenure and are investigating now, and interviews with militants who were in the know of the August 21 grenade attack, and other relevant documents. It is a great success of any reporter to unearth such documents and inform the public. All reports on Abu Ghraib prison abuse in Iraq were based on secret military and government documents that journalists secretly procured and made public, to cite only a recent example. Isn't the world better off because of that revelation? We take pride in such journalistic achievements.
Our revelation will also help Bangladesh, and assist in making BNP a far better party if it is used to clean up the corrupt and criminal elements that have entered it.
5. About revealing sources of news, it is a sacred duty of journalists, editors and newspapers to protect their sources. Many reporters, editors and publishers all over the world have accepted threats, intimidation and even jail terms for refusing to reveal the sources of their stories. The case of Pulitzer Award winner Judith Miller of The New York Times may be cited who braved imprisonment for not revealing her sources on CIA leaked reports on weapons of mass destruction. The famous "Deep Throat", the most crucial source of Watergate investigation of The Washington Post newspaper in the early seventies, which caused the fall of President Nixon, was never made public.
6. We really don't understand your anger and abusive language for our use of the phrase "Facts speak for themselves" in reference to Tarique Rahman.
What is so "low" and "indecent" about this expression? Don't facts speak for themselves?
7-8. We would be happy to apologise to Mr Tarique Rahman if you could tell us what we did wrong. We have quoted the IGP, Mr Nur Mohammad, in an interview given to this paper in June 2007, where he said that Mr Tarique Rahman has been supporting Bangla Bhai's militant activities.
9. Thank you for telling us about the dangers of disinformation.
However, may we humbly ask what sort of information was it for the BNP and many of its leaders to say, over a period of several months, in public meetings and rallies, and also in parliament (where MPs are under oath) that the August 21 grenade attack was the work of Awami League itself, notwithstanding the fact that 22 of its activists died, and it almost killed Sheikh Hasina herself? What was "Joj Miah" story if not disinformation of the crudest type to misdirect the investigation? You are so very right when you say, "Disinformation may have speed but truth has endurance." That is why the "information" that your party and some of its leaders tried to propagate about the August 21 incident did not endure.
10-20. These eleven paragraphs of the letter do not refer to our report under discussion. They only vilify the editor and restate the same allegations regarding our role during the state of emergency.
In our last reply, we had asked you to cite a single editorial, report, commentary, op-ed article etc that substantiates your contention. Regrettably your letter again makes the same "rhetorical" claims without any citation.
Here are some facts for your consideration. During emergency we wrote a total of 124 editorials on issues related to democracy, elections, freedom of political parties, civic rights and other aspects affected by the caretaker government's work. We give some details below. We wrote 13 editorials on caretaker government, 25 on politics/politicians, 22 on the EC, 10 on corruption, 7 on elections, 4 on voters' list, 7 on ACC, 12 on judiciary, 5 on political parties, 4 on reforms, 2 on bureaucracy, 3 on emergency and 4 on media freedom.
In all the above editorials, we consistently argued in defence of democracy and the need to return to democracy soonest. We strongly insisted that without lifting of emergency, free and unfettered politics was not possible. We spoke for reforms of political parties but said such reforms must come from inside and not be imposed from outside. About the role of the army, we repeatedly urged it to stay away from politics, refrain from the temptation to take power, and go back to the barracks after holding a free and fair election. We kept on hammering on the caretaker government and the EC to hold elections on time and not to postpone it under any circumstances. We took clear position against sending any politicians into exile, especially the AL and BNP chiefs, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia. We wrote editorials on both occasions of arrest of these two leaders and warned against it, and demanded that all legal and democratic rights must be assured to them. We also warned that interning these leaders would jeopardise elections and restoration of democracy.
Throughout the period our efforts were concentrated in the holding of a free and fair election. We also insisted that the elections must include all parties. We also wrote extensively on electoral reforms, and for electing honest and competent candidates. We invite you or any of your nominees to go through our editorials (we have them well organised in our library) and remove, once and for all, your misplaced impressions.
11. Here you quote an incomplete sentence of the editor totally out of context. You do not mention which TV channel broadcast it and at what time and in which programme (news, talk show, etc). Unless you specify, it is not possible for us to respond, especially when the basis of your claim is an incomplete sentence.
12. You claim that The Daily Star's editor "is reported to have publicly taken credit for bringing this administration to office through his writings". You also claim that it was widely reported in the issue of January 29, 2007 of all major newspapers. We have looked through the Ittefaq, Amar Desh, Naya Diganta, Jugantor, Samakal, New Age, Independent and UNB/BSS copies, and of course Prothom Alo and The Daily Star. Nowhere is The Daily Star editor reported to have said what you claim. We urge you to name the major paper(s) that substantiate your contention. If you fail, it will amount to your admitting that you falsely tried to denigrate this paper's editor.
13. Just because you or your staff had a problem locating the edition of January 29, 2007 in our website archives, you concluded that we were "destroying incriminating evidence". Even if the Internet edition went "missing", many libraries, archives, research institutions, and even many readers, not to mention other newspaper offices and, perhaps your own office, would have copies of that issue. For your information, we have two archives on the Internet, not one, for the benefit our readers. This is done for the unforeseen eventuality when a reader may have difficulty in entering any one of them. As for the print edition, even today you can buy an old copy from our office.
14, 15 and 16. In these paragraphs, you raise the question of whether or not we should have published confessional statements of people taken into custody during emergency. We felt that they were of public interest and that we had an obligation to share them with our readers. We were not alone to do so. Most other newspapers did the same. In our reports, we stated clearly that they came from the investigators and not our independent source. This is an international practice. In the recent story of killing in Fort Hood, USA, all the information is coming from investigators. The story of London bombing published and broadcast by global media came from investigators.
As for our "privileged document" it is to the credit of every reporter to dig out confidential sources and make them public. It in no way indicates collusion, as you imply. As journalists we all proudly remember how The New York Times secretly procured the "Pentagon papers" and published them, greatly embarrassing the US government and dealing a devastating blow to public confidence on the outcome of the Vietnam War.
17, 18 and 19. Here you take as "true" an unsubstantiated, unverified, and untrue personal comment of another person present at, what you yourself call, a "social gathering". Decency, courtesy, fairness and ordinary social norms demanded that the person verify what he assumed the editor to have said, and take permission (since the event was a private social gathering) before narrating it to someone who was not there, and allowing him (in this case, yourself) to quote in a formal letter of his party's secretary general. He obviously heard the editor wrong and as such misreported on the event. The editor said Awami League and BNP are the "biggest beneficiaries" (not enemies as you misguidedly quote) of democracy. The sense in which this comment was made is that these are the two parties that alternately got elected to power.
Without verifying what has been said, and also using it totally out of context, you write two paragraphs whose substance does not make sense as the premise on which you base them is wrong. It is unwise to take formal positions on gossip and hearsay as it may lead you to taking positions on false statements, as it has happened in this case.
20. We respect your right to hold any opinion about us you wish. Our only plea would be that if those views were based on facts, then everybody would be well served.
The beauty of a newspaper is that all its work is in the written form. We can neither hide from what we say, nor can anybody attribute to us what we haven't said. Reports, articles, features and everything else can also be taken to judge the overall performance of a paper, but for policy it must be judged by its editorials. Under no circumstances can comments of its editor (which, in this case, is an incomplete sentence), taken in fragments of TV clips and also taken totally out of context, can form the basis of judgment on a newspaper.
We have invited you before, and do so again, to cite published materials in this paper to substantiate the accusations that you make about us.
We stand before the public in the written form, which is the oldest and most durable form of communication, to be judged.
We have deliberately responded to your letter in as detailed a form as possible. This we did as a mark of respect to you and your party and also to show how seriously we take your comments and how sincerely we have tried to respond to every point raised. We did so not to win any argument but to genuinely try and remove any misunderstanding that you may have about our report.
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