Syed Ashfaqul Haque on Bangladesh

Has journalism in Bangladesh changed since you first joined the profession in the early 90s?

When I joined it was not the way it is now, or the way it is in the West or perhaps anywhere else in the world. At that time, all the bright people graduating from university wanted to join the civil service or become army gentlemen – because it meant having power. Some who were not very bright and who perhaps didn’t have a job became journalists.

Why did you decide to become a journalist?

When I was a student at Dhaka University it was the hub of protests against the autocratic regime of Hussain Mohammad Ershad, the chief of army staff who took over. Many students were killed and I lost a friend during a police attack. This injected something into me to find a profession through which I could say something and protest against injustice.

About 30 of us from Dhaka University responded to an advertisement from The Daily Star. But when we joined all our supervisors had grey hair – and they thought we were no-good young things who had no real intention of becoming journalists. They thought we would move on to another profession soon enough. It took me three years to prove to the management that I was here to stay, and in 1995 became a permanent member of staff.

Could you describe a particular incident when journalists at The Daily Star were intimidated?

Last year there was a gang rape in Patuakhali and two of the local lawmaker’s activists were involved. The lawmaker took the extraordinary step of asking everybody not to go to the police station or court to file a report because he said he would punish the culprits vigilante-style. He captured the 14 boys, took them to a classroom, brought the girl and her parents, and demanded each boy pays the family 10,000 taka (£89). And then in front of the girl he beat the boys black and blue.

The parents were mightily happy, because in Bangladesh what happens in these situations is that you go to the police and file a case and then the next day the culprits get bail and they go and intimidate the family. And the girl came from a poor family, so the money mattered a lot. But the family was then denying what actually happened to her.

When The Daily Star came to know about it, we felt that this girl’s honour should not be worth Tk 140,000. We were the only newspaper that ran a campaign against it. The lawmaker was furious with us. He said, ‘It would have taken three or four decades to get a verdict because our legal system is so lengthy. Here I executed justice and you newsmen are criticising me?’

Our reporter encountered many threats and the journalist from another newspaper who first broke the story was sacked. But my editor stood by me and we ran more than 13 stories, always with the by-line of ‘Staff Correspondent’ rather than the reporter’s name. We never use by-lines if it could be harmful for the reporter. Eventually the culprits were arrested and the prime minister weighed in. The case is ongoing at the moment.

Could you tell us about the investigative report about corruption in imports for which you and a reporter won three awards?

It was a very complicated story, involving many powerful big shots. It took us at least six months to investigate – the information is not easy to obtain because the machinery is corrupt. I knew that as news editor I was running a risk so I had to be careful with every word.

When the report was printed, all hell broke loose. My editor’s good childhood friend was the main culprit and led the crusade against me. I received threatening phone calls and the sources who fed us the information were under watch. The editor called me and the senior reporter, Julfikar Ali Manik, to his office to meet with his childhood friend. We had a confrontation and he said I was a very cunning journalist and that I wrote the report in such a way that he couldn’t nail me down. He was so angry that he just blurted it out. The editor threw him out of the office.

For the next two months I received threatening phone calls. The caller would say things like, ‘I will get you. I will make your life difficult. I will get your kids.’

Could you describe the events relating to the 1971 Liberation War?

It was a strange war, in a sense. Until 1947 the Indian subcontinent was one country. West Pakistan [now Pakistan] and East Pakistan [now Bangladesh] were 1,400 miles apart. We were separated from India on the basis of religion, and thanks to the British. Before 1947 there were Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians living harmoniously. I remember my family used to go to see the Hindu ‘puja’ and we attended Christian ceremonies. And they came to ours.

After partition the West Pakistanis dumped a decree on us that Urdu rather than Bengali was the state language. There were protests and bloodshed. There was also economic repression and in 1971 it culminated in our Liberation War. It was a wild war and the killing was ruthless. In nine months three million people were killed and two million women were raped.

The irony is that although it was a war for liberation, within that some were fighting about religion. The Pakistanis had a different campaign of propagating religion. Some Bangladeshis sided with Pakistanis and became collaborators.

On December 14, 1971 just before liberation, the Pakistanis killed 140 of our top intellectuals. Many more went missing. Later their relatives discovered mass graves.

Let’s turn to your first book, Ekattorer Dinguli or Days of 1971 by Jahanara Imam.

This is the book I like most – it’s an amazing story.