Guwahati: Sad news for scribes as the new year approaches: in the first part of 2023, a young journalist from Bangladesh was assassinated.
The reporter has been identified as 27-year-old Ashiqul Islam who works for Dainik Paryabekhyan and hails from the Brahmanbaria region (which is close to the State of Tripura in northeastern India).
A bunch of miscreants murdered Islam on January 9th by hacking him to death. The international organisation for media safety and rights, Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), denounced the murder and called for an impartial investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“We have just passed a deadly year for working journalists with 116 casualties across the world. Ukraine has lost 34 media persons followed by Mexico (17), Haiti (8), Pakistan (6), Philippines (5), Colombia, India (4 each), Bangladesh, Israel/Palestine, Honduras, Yemen (3 each), etc in 2022,” said Blaise Lempen, president of PEC.
Lempen has asked for an international convention to address the issue of jouno-murders, pleading with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for a high level investigation to look into the motivation of the offenders.
Islam was attacked by a group of assailants while he was returning home from a nighttime event, according to PEC’s South Asia representative Nava Thakuria. Islam was severely hurt by the offenders. He was promptly taken to a local hospital by witnesses, but he died from his injuries shortly after.
The Bangla police have arrested at least one person and are looking into the perpetrators’ motives after accusing him of being involved in the crime.
Last year, attackers took the lives of Bangladeshi journalists Hashibur Rahaman Rubel, Mohiuddin Sarker Nayeem, and Abdul Bari. On the other hand, India saw the deaths of Subhash Kumar Mahato, Juned Khan Pathan, Rohit Kumar Biswal, and Sudhir Saini. As a result of several incidences, Pakistan lost Sadaf Naeem, Arshad Sharif, Muhammad Younis, Iftikhar Ahmed, Hasnain Shah, Murtaza Shar, and Athar Mateen. Similar to this, the unrelenting military crimes in Myanmar in 2022 claimed the lives of photojournalist Aye Kyaw and reporter Pu Tui Dim.