Stating that corporate media outlets in Bangladesh are working to protect the looters and corrupts, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Monday said it is not possible to ensure press freedom without democracy.
“We now see so many media outlets in the country but they can’t work freely as they’re not independent…corporate media has been created in the country in a very cunning way as now big business organisations own newspapers and TV channels,” he said.
Speaking at a seminar, the BNP leader said the corporate media owners are doing business alongside availing of the facilities of the government and banks. “These media outlets have become a corporation to protect those who are taking away money from the banks.”
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Interestingly, he said, one corporate media outlet now runs news against another one and one businessman against another businessman and all of them are involved with fascism.
“The bottom line is that it is not possible to ensure press freedom without democracy and media can't work properly if they don't have freedom,” the BNP leader observed.
BNP arranged the programme titled “Media in Bangladesh: One and Half-Decades of Nightmare “ at a city hotel.
Fakhrul said all-pervasive fascism has engulfed our country and the main weapon of fascism is to completely control the media.
He said the fascists need to control the media to deprive people of their minimum democratic and constitutional rights, which the current regime has been subtly doing for the past one and a half decades.
In 1971, the BNP leader said, the freedom fighters liberated the country with the goal to build a democratic Bangladesh. “But after 52 years of independence, we have to now say that there is no democracy and press freedom in the country.”
Even, he said the international community is clearly saying that there is no democracy and election in Bangladesh while the democratic and human rights of people are being taken away.
He said their party leaders and activists are putting in their all efforts to unite people for the restoration of democracy.
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The BNP leader said the current government has completed all necessary arrangements to fulfill its old design to establish one-party rule and cement its power.
As part of the arrangements, he said, they changed the Constitution and established their control over the parliament, electoral system, administration and judiciary. “The worst thing is that they’re regulating the entire media.”
The BNP leader also alleged that the government polluted the entire society and destroyed politics and all the achievements of the country.
“Let us all move forward without buying any more time to remove the darkness and bring forth the light of the sun. Everyone has to come out on the streets unitedly with courage and all strengths as we did in 1971 and the 90s to bring back democracy, protect our freedom and human rights,” Fakhrul said.
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He said the Awami League regime must be forced to step down and dissolve the parliament by handing over the power to a non-party neutral government through a wave of movement.
Fakhrul said their party chairperson Khaleda Zia, who was sent to jail in false cases, has been fighting for life in the hospital with various ailments.
He said though doctors have repeatedly been talking about her treatment at an advanced centre abroad, the government is not giving her that scope.