A group of online activists demanding cancellation Bengali daily Prothom Alo’s registration tried to lay a siege to the newspaper’s office on Wednesday.
They are agitated over the newspaper for describing Bangladesh’s Liberation War in a report as an ‘India-Pakistan war’.
Police, however, obstructed the organisation called ‘CP Gang’ from laying the siege to the office at Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar.The activists around took out procession from near Petrocentre at 4:30pm and headed towards Prothom ALo office.
A large number of police personnel who were already deployed in front of the office did not allow the protesters to continue their siege.
Facing obstruction, the online activists raised slogans after positioning themselves on the street south to the newspaper’s office. They ended their programme around 5pm.
The activists have demanded cancelling the paper’s registration and publication. They also burnt some copies of the newspaper during the protest.
The protesters also demanded bringing to book the paper’s Editor Motiur Rahman and others responsible for running the report.
On May 17, Prothom Alo made the observation in a profile – ‘Tea-seller to Prime Minister’ – of India’s newly elected prime minister Narendra Modi, saying he had “formally joined as an RSS ‘campaigner’ after the India-Pakistan war of 1971”.
The report raised a storm in social media networks, forcing the paper to offer an explanation.
The paper’s News Editor said that the story had been based on information provided by news agency Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) and that it had been kept unchanged.
The paper had not, however, attributed the source in its print edition.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed Joy on Tuesday also called for a boycott of the country’s second-largest circulated daily.
Evidently, after the paper’s explanation failed to convince them, several Dhaka University-centric organisations held a protest rally Tuesday and demanded an apology from Prothom Alo Editor Motiur Rahman within two days.-bdnews24.com
