Bangladeshi newspapers attacked by mob

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1:04You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. Shomosh and Awanda Yedda, Fifth Floor, Boirino, Taran Yub has stayed. This is the Fifth Floor at the heart of global storytelling with BBC journalists from all around the world. I'm your host, Irana Taranik. In December, the offices of two of Bangladesh's biggest newspapers, the Daily Star and Prottom Allo, were surrounded by mobs attacked and set on fire. At the Daily Star,

2:06journalists were forced to take shelter on the roof of the building. They were eventually rescued by the army, and many required hospital treatment. Prottom Allo is a Bengali language sister paper of the Daily Star. It was also attacked at the same time. The BBC's Shautik Viswas went to Dhaka to investigate the causes of this violence, and he's with me now. Shautik, welcome to the Fifth Floor, and thank you for finding time for us. Thank you. First of all, what were the signs of trouble in Dhaka on the 18th of December? This attack has a very curious genesis, because, you know, that day, Sharif Osman Hadhi was a young prominent youth leader, had died in a Singapore hospital, after being shot by masked attackers outside at Dhaka mosque the previous week. Now, Hadhi was an upcoming young youth leader. He was not a politician. He had started a cultural

3:10organization. He was a nationalist, and a lot of his speeches and his rhetoric had a lot of anti-India sentiment. Now, anti-India sentiments are not uncommon in Bangladesh. It has had a love and hate relationship with India, so that's not uncommon. And the Daily Star and the Prottom Allo had come under attack from a lot of people include Hadhi's organization of being agents of India. Now, that's also not very uncommon in Bangladesh, where, you know, people are identified as pro-India or anti-India. But anyway, so these papers are branded as Indian agents, accused of downplaying Hadhi's assassination. And mind you, it was a huge, huge story. Almost the entire nation was in mourning because of the murder of this leader. So, it does seem that the mob which came and attacked these two newspapers, attacked it because they believed that they were anti-Indian papers. But it's still not clear whether the people belonging to Hadhi's organizations were behind

4:15the attack. That's absolutely unclear. So, we really don't know that who did this and why did they do it? We don't know because there's been no clarity on what the motive of this attack might have been. We know that on Facebook, and I've heard this from a lot of people that there were a bunch of Facebookers, Bangladesh's, who were not in the country, apparently ordering in courts. Who were these people? Why were they orchestrating these attacks online? That's absolutely unclear. There's been no clarity on what the motive of this attack might have been. You already mentioned that there was a lot of anti-India sentiment and those two newspapers were accused of being pro-Indian in their tone. But these two newspapers are really big in Bangladesh. You liken them to the French Le Monde or the New York Times or the Times. Was there any proof given

5:21that the newspapers were biased in any way? Or was it just sort of totally invented? I think a bit of it was invented. I have never found bias. I mean, the daily star is a pretty kind of, I would imagine a neutral newspaper in a very, very oppressive news environment in Bangladesh. And Guatemala is a really, really good newspaper. It's almost like the laman of Bangladesh. It's like the leading Bengal in newspaper. It's about twenty-eight years old. And the daily star is about thirty-four years old. And both are very reputable, serious newspapers. They're not tabloids or screechy kind of media. They're very complete. Let's go back to that night of the 18th of December. The newspaper journalist Zima Islam. She's young, isn't she? Yeah, she's a thirty-something investigative reporter. She's finishing her article late about Sharif Osman Hadi, about his funeral and the whole case of his tragic death after shooting. She does her job

6:30of a journalist. She files the story away. Can you tell us what happened to her and her colleagues that evening? So, it must have been close to midnight when it finished a story. And the very interesting fact is that she said they knew that the building was going to come under attack, because a lot of stuff was coming out on Facebook, which was basically a lot of people posting things that are garbage on the way to attack these newspapers and so on. So, they had been threats. Remember, Facebook is hugely popular in Bangladesh. In ways it is not in most countries around the world. It's still a go-to place for news. I think in a country of 170 million, about 50 million people are on Facebook. So, she said that they knew that there was a mob, a protester is moving towards these two papers, but they thought that it would be just some protest and some demonstrations happening outside the office and it had happened in the run

7:31up to this attack. So, she said, my first job was to make sure that I finished my story. So, she stayed on and there were about 27 colleagues of hers. And this is an amazing thing. As they're looking at their Facebook phones and saying that there is a crowd or a mob moving towards the office, she actually said, stop. Finish is a story. Hit submit. And then she heads downstairs with her colleagues. When they went down, they realized things were very bad. Shatik, I was thinking, what would I do if a mob surrounded my building? Would I finish the story? Would I try to save myself? And as yet, I don't know the answers. Tell me, a journalist knew that the mob is after them. They knew they were innocent in doing their job and presenting the balanced view of the major story for Bangladesh. Where was the security? Where was the police? Yeah, now that's a very good question because if you think that the mob had collected over like one hour and where were the security. Now, remember, this is happening in December when Bangladesh was being ruled by an interim government. There had been a lot of

8:35mob attacks during that time. And one reason was that the police and the security forces were completely demoralized after the July 24 uprising when Sheikh Hassanah had to flee the country and a 15-year-old government collapsed. Now, she is accused, her party and she is accused of killing 1400 people according to the student protests broke out. And a lot of these shootings, the police were allegedly responsible. So you can imagine the police is demoralized, the security forces are demoralized. And I would think that is one of the reason why they couldn't do much. It tells you about the failure of the state in a complete, complete collapse of law in order which was happening in Bangladesh that allowed the mob to go in and then they then they vandalized and set fire to the building. So it was not a simple protest. How did the journalist eventually escape? So Zayma told me the story, five past midnight, she's files a story and then they said, let's go down. A bunch of journalists had already made the way out of the building. It's a,

9:38I think an eight-story building with a roof on the nine-floor. But 28 of them were trapped inside including two women, one of them was Zayma. And when they went down, they actually saw, you know, they heard the sound of brick smashing glass at the reception from outside and people were trying to come in at which point they realized that it was very, very unsafe to try to go out through the reception because there was a huge mob outside waiting outside that come into the office. And at that point, all of them decided to just climb up nine floors and go up to the roof because they thought if the building was set on fire, they would still have a chance if they went to the roof, which I thought was a very brave and intelligent part of the mobil decision that they didn't log themselves into any of the floors, really. I think the newsroom was in the seventh floor. They had gone down to the first floor and they climbed all the way back to the ninth floor. By which time Zayma says that the smoke was already kind of funneling up the elevator shaft.

10:42So it was a very dramatic precarious four and a half hours on the roof in the darkness with the smoke coming up. And they were getting messages from their colleagues downstairs who had kind of melted into that crowd. And they were sending messages that they're planning murder, they could drop a bomb, you know, things like that because things are very bad. For four and a half hours, these 27 people were literally trapped. And Zayma was I think one of the bravest, but there were people who collapsed from inhaling smoke. She said one of her favorite colleagues actually passed out. They had a single tap which was riding on the roof, they soaked whatever they could, anchored shirts, things like that, t-shirts and held it. And they just kind of you know, waited and waited till the army came. The army came after four and a half hours as you were saying. And how did that affect them? How did it affect their work as journalists and their

11:46lives? So the other thing is the army and the police possibly had come earlier, but they were not able to control them all. And as I said, it also tells you how badly the lawyer in order was compromised in Bangladesh. By the time they came in, I think a bunch of people from the mob had already come into the building and they had started setting fire on every floor. There was a fantastic photo exhibition which is going on on the ground floor and the first floor, I think, of the July 24 movement by the best photographers they had. That was one to send us. They went up to the first floor, they burned down an auditorium, they burned down. The entire archive. So all in all, I think this effort from like two million dollars worth of losses, you know. When I went there about 40, 50 days later, it was like it seemed that it had been just freshly attacked. It was just like piles and piles of glass. He'd buy the entrance and a burnt out shell and foreign diplomats were still filing through. At the same time, a similar attack was launched against its

12:53Bengali sister, Proto Malo. Can you tell us what was happening there? Proto Malo was lucky. The journalist at Proto Malo had already evacuated by the time the mob died. So thankfully, we didn't have siege-like situation at Proto Malo. So how do you come back after that? How long did it take them to resume operation, to resume working? So the interesting thing is these 28 journalists and staffers went down to the staircase. The army created a safe passage, but the newspaper actually didn't come out the next morning. The print edition came out on the 20th. On the 20th of December, they came back with a eight-page edition and the headline prominently was unbound, which was a very, very striking headline with a photograph of the burning building. I think it was one of the most powerful front pages I've seen on newspapers. Are there precedents for something similar for attacks against journalists in Bangladesh? And going on from there, what are the challenges for

13:56the new Prime Minister of Bangladesh? Bangladesh is not the safest country to be a journalist. Now, if you look at the reporters without borders ranking from 2025, I think it rains at 149. It used to be in the 150s and 60s. It's notched up a little bit because the last one year, media has seen some relative freedoms because there was entered in government. But yeah, I mean, a lot of intimidation in the last 15 years, a lot of restrictive laws, a lot of journalists have been jailed for criticizing the government. A lot of the media groups are actually owned by business houses with those ties with the political parties. And journalists are charged by this digital security act for any online criticism. So the freedom of the press has been under a lot of stress, especially in the last 15 years, as the government got more and more oppressive. But, you know, there are, I think, 200 newspapers or something in Bangladesh, coming out every morning, small bit. So ostensibly, if you go there, you will think that this must be a very, very

15:00vibrant country media-wise because there's so much of print. There's literally, there's still new stands. There's still a lot of newspapers and magazines and so on. And of course, Guatemala and Delhi Star are the leading periodicals. But yes, they have worked under a lot of stress. And to your question about what a new government could do is, I think the new government has to possibly make sure that Bangladesh should return to a vibrant democracy, which it has been from time to time. When I went to Bangladesh in Dhaka, I'm not saying in December, it was exactly that. Because there was an interim government in power. Suddenly, the media was like, felt completely free. People were discussing everything under the sun, criticizing, in bar rooms, and hotels, and restaurants. And it felt like the most vibrant South Asian capital in December. More vibrant than Delhi. Absolutely. I mean, it was so free. The new government needs to make sure

16:04that the argumentative Bangladeshi civil society and media should not be strangled, you know. Because, you know, Bengal is a very argumentative people. They love debates and they love criticism and everything else. So this is completely unlike the character of Bangladesh to kind of put the media in better Israel. Thank you, Shotik, Shotik, Pizwas. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This is the fifth floor, and I'm Irana Taranyuk. So you're running out of closet space. The good news, you don't need to stop shopping. You just need to start selling, with the real real. The real real is the world's largest and most trusted resource for authenticated luxury resale, whether it's that mini bag that can't even fit your phone. Or those boots you never fully broke in. The real real handles everything,

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19:11because it just takes one good acquaintance, right? One good opportunity for them to get access to something really important. It seems in most of the cases in 90 or maybe even 99% of the cases, it doesn't happen. But what if it happens? Journalists from the BBC's 43 language services are here to help you make sense of the world. Serbia has decided to withdraw tons and tons of gold from abroad back to its own vaults. In an environment of, as they say, increased global uncertainty, the National Bank of Serbia imported and returned 13 tons of gold from abroad. She's glimmers, unpredictable, and at times aggressively confrontation. And to get to grips with the facts behind the headlines. We haven't seen him in photos or videos or anything on state media since his succession and even like before that, the videos on photos of him were very scarce.

20:15And we don't know much about him, but some fear that he's going to be exact replica of his father. That last voice you heard was my colleague, Gonce Habibi Azato, BBC Persian. And right now I would like to remind you about the work of Gonce and all her colleagues at BBC Persian, which is the Persian language service of the BBC News and it's used by 24 million people around the world. The majority of them in Iran is by being blocked and routinely jammed by Iranian authorities. Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, is what South Koreans call the international success of TV shows like Squid Game and K-pop Demon Hunters. The phenomenon has grown since 1990s in compassing South Korean music, TV drama, food, and cosmetics. Boyband BTS have been a huge part of the Hallyu craze since they were formed in 2010, holding a clutch of streaming records and

21:17finding legions of fans with songs like Dynamite and Boyward Love. In 2022, they took a pause to complete their military service. As they prepare for a huge return concert and so all, at the end of March, Sunwoo Clee of BBC Korean is with me on the 5th floor Sunwoo. Welcome to the 5th floor. How has the bands return been received in their home country, South Korea? I can see a lot of people's excited reactions here and so their comeback concert will be held 21st of March. So so cities preparing for their concert, they are installing the stage and then a lot of restaurants around there, a lot of hotels around there are preparing for their show. I went to the street in Seoul with my colleague to ask people how they think about BTS' comeback and I was so surprised to see how people are thrilled about this and then especially I met a

22:18lot of foreigners who just came for the show and then they told me that they've been waiting for us for more than three years. Can you tell us more about the significance of the place where the concert would be held? Yeah, so the first concert is going to be held at Kwanghwamun Square and then Kwanghwamun is the main gate of Kyungbokung Palace, which was the main royal palace during the Joseon Dynasty, the former Korean Kingdom. And so Kwanghwamun and the square in front of it are widely considered as the symbolic heart of the city. So it's one of the most popular places for foreign visitors to see but also for Koreans. It has a deeper meaning and many people see Kwanghwamun Square as a historic and symbolic space that represents the country itself. There is a certain symbolism that this historic place is being taken over by BTS, the kings of their Hallyu wave,

23:26right? Yeah. Can you tell us this absence of nearly three years from touring, from giving live concerts? It was because the band members had to undergo military service when they supposed to be exempt. As people I know, South Korea and North Korea are officially still in war state. So in South Korea, every man has to go to the military. So in these days, the term is 18 months, one year and a half. So the BTS members begin to go to the military from 2023. I guess they stopped their concert in 2022 and then began to go to the military one by one. So it was last year. The last member came out from the military service. They staggered their military service, taking turns to do the duty, military duty, in order not to disappear completely, right?

24:30Because they were at the peak of their popularity. So they couldn't just all go at the same time. Is that the reasoning? Yeah. Yeah. That is why they didn't go all together. Sunwoo, can you tell us how the government had to be involved in the debate of the military service for the BTS members? Not just for BTS, but for all the athletes, all the famous athletes or all the famous artists. Some people argued that losing some great people for nearly two years is kind of loss for the country, for the whole country. So those kind of great people, we should think some alternatives for these great talented people. On the other side, there are also kind of people arguing that this is a duty that everyone should do. So there is no exception. There is no outlier. They should go to the military. And that was the debate. So the four BTS announced that they

25:35are going to do the military service. People requested to the government. You need to do something on this issue. But before the government's announcement came out, BTS announced that, yeah, we'll do the service. We'll go to the military. Domestically, yeah, I cannot deny that whether men did the military duty or not plays a great role in how people see them. So after they completed their military service, yeah, people kind of see them more respectfully. Military services, regarded as kind of armor here. And because their popularity was connected to their stage performances and their beautiful kind of harmonious singing and dancing, many skeptics thought, oh, BTS in two years time, nobody will know them, nobody will remember them. Their popularity

26:36hasn't faded, has it? Yeah, I was really surprised to see that people are so excited about their coming back. And then I really panic to see that all the world tour tickets were sold out, very shortly. To be honest, as a journalist, I tried to get the tickets for the Kwongamun concert and the ticket opened at like 5 p.m. and I prepared it from 10 minutes before. And then I tried to enter it at right time and found that, yeah, I was in the queue and that my number was like 30,000. Wow. It was crazy. Did you get a ticket? I didn't get the ticket. I wasn't able to get the ticket. And all of my colleagues said, yeah, my number was 10,000. My number was 20,000. So, yeah, we were all so surprised to see that popularity. You have to come to London in July to see them

27:37if you are lucky with the tickets. Oh, yeah, I hope so. As a Korean, are you proud by this phenomenon called Hallyu or the Korean Wave? How does it make you feel? Oh, yeah, well, in fact, Korea has never really received this much global tension culturally before. So, many people, including me, feel very happy and proud about their country's current cultural popularity. Yeah, in the past, when I traveled abroad, I always had to explain where Korea was or whether Kim Jong-il or his father Kim Jong-il was from North or South. And then where I was from. So, seeing the whole world paying attention to BTS performing here and so, I mean, BTS became a world star. And their comeback concert here is a big news. The BBC, Netflix, and every other

28:40media is focusing on that show. Yeah, that's really surreal to me. And wonderful. Thank you so much, Sunwook. Thank you, Sunwook. And thank you to all my guests this week. Before we go, we love hearing from you. If you have questions for us or our correspondents, we want to tell us what you thought of the program, you can email us at the fifth floor at bbc.co.uk. Don't be a stranger. Until next time. So, you're running out of closet space. The good news? You don't need to stop shopping. You just

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