Bangladesh – February 2023

Dainik Dinkal, the newspaper of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), ceased publishing on 20 February, a day after the Press Council (media regulator) upheld a closure order issued by the government on 25 December. The grounds for the order were that a publisher living abroad violates printing and publication laws. However, the publisher cited by the regulator had resigned and been replaced by the current publisher, Shamsur Rahman Shimul Biswas, in 2016 and moved abroad to escape a criminal conviction for money laundering. Biswas’ appealed to the regulator as Dainik Dinkal’s publisher but was rejected. Rights experts consider the move to be a blatant attack on journalistic pluralism, which follows a resurgence in the past two months in attacks against journalists critical of the ruling party. 

Sources: Al Jazeera, The Daily Star (1), Reporters Without Borders, The Daily Star (2)