Bangladeshi journalist Ekramul Haque was released on bail by a court in Dhaka earlier this month. However, his freedom was short lived as the police re-arrested him on the same day. Today Ekramul Haque is still under detention for numerous charges, which press freedom advocates say are baseless.

Journalism in Bangladesh is a scary business. Eleven Bangladeshi journalists have been killed since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international group that advocates press freedom across the world – that’s more than one a year. Ninety-two per cent of these deaths were the result of cold blooded murder.

Legal charges
Madeline Earp, Senior Asia programme researcher for CPJ, says that the government has a tendency to use legal charges against journalists reporting on delicate issues. “We have seen two cases in the last year alone. In Ekramul Haque’s case, we believe he is being targeted, because his press accreditation was cancelled only a few days prior to his arrest. We haven’t yet decided whether there is a basis to the charges against him,” she says.

Haque was the editor of the online news portal Sheershanews and the newspaper Sheersha Kagoj until his arrest on extortion charges on 31 July 2011. Haque denied these charges vehemently, but that didn’t stop the government from shutting down the two news outlets he headed.

Sheershanews issued a press release accusing the government of intimidating the editor for having reported on corrupt government practices. Haque had reportedly been writing about the Bangladeshi government’s corruption scandals for several months before his arrest.

Self-censorship
Earp says journalists in Bangladesh tend to avoid writing about controversial topics. Corruption and crime are primary among them. Reports from the CPJ suggest that 75 per cent of the journalists killed in the last decade had been covering crime, and 50 per cent of them had exposed corruption.

The obvious degree of risk involved in these dealing with these issues pushes journalists towards self-censorship. Crime, corruption, human rights and politics have become taboo topics for the media in Bangladesh.

Impunity
Reporters Without Borders (RWB), a press freedom advocacy group, released a statement after Haque's arrest raising questions about the degree of impunity for crimes committed against journalists. “We are outraged by Haque's new arrest on the very day of his release after three months in prison on trumped-up charges," it said, adding, "How could the judicial authorities allow a journalist to be held for 90 days on the basis of clearly fabricated accusations and then allow him to be re-arrested on the basis of a similar complaint filed on the day he was freed?”

The deteriorating state of press freedom in Bangladesh is also highlighted by the lack of media attention for Haque’s case. While he remains in prison, there are few on the outside who would dare to raise their voices and risk angering the authorities.