Watching the watchmen not follow the money
Responding to a question from a fellow MP on 28 October 2009, the Finance Minister reportedly told the Sangsad that the Bangladesh Bank or the Finance Department had no information about:
- how much money allegedly siphoned off overseas under the BNP-JI government has been recovered or by whom;
- who actually laundered the money in the first place; or
- whether any action has been taken against anyone for laundering the money.
This was reported by Amader Shomoy, Amar Desh, and Naya Diganta. Of course, the latter two newspapers are firmly in the anti-liberation camp sympathetic to BNP-JI, and the first will print any old rubbish has a history of printing false inaccurate news. So I wanted to know what the pro-liberation progressive mainstream newspapers such as Prothom Alo and Daily Star said.
May be I am looking at the wrong places, but I couldn’t find anything on the 29 October edition of either papers.
I don’t want to get into a debate about Tarique Rahman’s guilt or innocence. Nor do I want relitigate 1/11. But I do wonder why the largest national dailies have not reported this.
It’s not like these papers have been silent on this issue. Prothom Alo reported on 5 February that the Prime Minister has set up an inter-departmental task force to follow the money trail. And Daily Star reported on 12 March 2007 that Tarique Rahman had admitted, in the face of ‘extensive questioning’, to holding bank accounts in five countries, and the investigators were to ’seek assistance from the Bangladesh Bank (BB) and the foreign ministry to know how much money he has in those accounts and how he sent the sums abroad’.
Star reporters like Julfikar Ali Manik are making up fantastic stories finding information that links Hawa Bhaban to the 21 August attack. Why aren’t they following the Hawa Bhaban’s money?
Was the task force set up by the PM in February incompetent?
Did the investigators in charge of torture extensive questioning took the money themselves (I think the Bangla term is chor-er upor batpari)?
Or was there no money in the first place?
These are important questions that we need to know the answer to. Somehow, I doubt we will.
(Crossposted at Mukti)
Daily Star has developed a habit of completely ignoring any news report that upsets their own narrative. You see, if they printed this, they wouldn’t have anything to say about their claims that USD 200 Million has already been marked as laundered money and is ready to return to BD.
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Well that’s their call tacit, they will be judged responsible for it. time to develop and breathe light into better less cultish narratives, against the prevailing odds and biases.
give it a generation.
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jyoti Reply:
November 12th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Fug, I’m not sure if we need a whole generation to develop better narratives or ideas. The task here is factchecking. Muhith said something or he didn’t. Some people reported it, others suppressed it. Today it may be just an irrelevant blogger in a little known venue. But it is actually technologically possible to unearth more of this kind of shenanigans. I think people who deal with half truths and distortions will be in big trouble once the full implications of the information age are realised.
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But is it their call, fug? If a newspaper publishes allegations against public officials, does not journalistic ethos hold that the newspaper should also publish any information that could potentially clear those officials of those allegations?
In the second paragraph of this post, Amar Desh and Naya Diganta are labeled as sympathetic to BNP-JI. How should one label Daily Star then? During the tenure of the CTG, when I mentioned torture in remand, and cited a Naya Diganta article as proof, Zafar Sobhan scoffed. A mere Naya Diganta article did not prove anything to him.
The difference between news and opinion is one line media personnel cross at their peril. Newspapermen have opinions, and they express their opinions in the appropriate platforms. But to suppress news that does not fit a newspaper’s viewpoint is a grave deriliction of journalistic duty.
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fugstar Reply:
November 12th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Tradiationally, Mujib and post mojub era Awami Trickery usually comes from emotional charging and minimal post event fact checking. They arent really all that numerate but dont need to worry because neither are we.
People accept it because the other narrative arent really demonstrable, and because there is something wrong with their brains.
The symbolic field of Bangladesh changes slowly, but whats behind the power of a certain individual reproduce his political bad taste, to wield a ’scoff’, and call somebody a ‘killer’ before they are judged guilty….. well that is intriguing. Undoing that deviously constructed and reproducing ‘logic’ is tough.
But i suppose thats why you need politicians worthy of the name.
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