One of the regular tasks of human rights organizations is to collect information on all forms of repression, torture, harassment and rights violations, with special attention to journalism, one of the most risky professions. Their records show that in the nine months from January to September this year, 1 journalist has been murdered and 216 journalists have become victims of repression and harassment. Recently, Golam Rabbani, a journalist from Jamalpur, was murdered in an attack by people from the ruling party. Attacks on journalists have become quite common these days and are taken lightly. How much can journalist leaders protest and demonstrate regarding this? This recent forum found something new troubling in US visa policy.
Speaking about the process of imposing US visa ban on those who obstruct free and fair elections in Bangladesh, US Ambassador to Dhaka Peter Haas said the media could also fall under the visa policy. Leaders of a faction of the politically divided journalists’ union reacted to his statement, saying it was pressure and undue interference on independent journalism.
Journalists from the government camp took part in the ‘Justice for Journalists protest against US pressure on media in the name of visa policy’. He claimed that Ambassador Haas’s statement violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Regardless of the relevance of US law here, we need to know if this is the freedom of speech we wanted.
Any protest against curtailing the freedom of journalists is justified and anyone who believes in democracy will support it. The question is, will the US visa policy actually harm media rights? Their policy states, under this policy, “The United States will be able to impose restrictions on the issuance of visas to any Bangladeshi individual who is believed to be responsible for or involved in undermining the democratic electoral process in Bangladesh ” If the media and journalists do their job of publishing objective news and views in a professional manner, then surely it is not expected to undermine or disrupt the election process? So this means there is really no pressure on the media except to maintain professional integrity. If the media does its duty in looking at whether there have been any large-scale violations of voting rights like in 2014 and 2018, I see no reason to risk facing any kind of sanctions.