{"id":10655,"date":"2018-08-10T16:41:33","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T10:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pahichan.com\/?p=10655"},"modified":"2018-08-21T18:42:34","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T12:57:34","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-shahidul-alam-bangladesh-should-let-him-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/the-guardian-view-on-shahidul-alam-bangladesh-should-let-him-go\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on Shahidul Alam: Bangladesh should let him go"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kathmandu\/Pahichan – T<\/span><\/span>he work of renowned photographer and social activist Shahidul Alam has appeared in publications worldwide, including the Guardian. Now attention is on the 63-year-old himself. Police in Bangladesh\u00a0have arrested him<\/a>\u00a0over \u201cprovocative comments\u201d on Facebook; he was seized just after giving\u00a0an interview about protests<\/a>\u00a0that have convulsed the country. As Mr Alam observed, demonstrations initially about road safety were fuelled by anger over issues including corruption and gagging of the media by the ruling Awami League.<\/p>\n

The resulting crackdown has seen police use teargas and rubber bullets on the streets \u2013 and the notorious section 57 of the information and communication technology act against Mr Alam. It has been\u00a0employed against scores of citizens<\/a>, and more than 20 journalists recently, for perfectly normal criticism or discussion of leaders. Even the government concedes it should go; unfortunately, the\u00a0proposed replacement\u00a0is in some ways worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Britain and others should press for proper reform of the law, as well as urging the authorities to release Mr\u00a0Alam, drop the charges and thoroughly investigate allegations of mistreatment in custody; friends of the photographer said he was unable to walk by himself into court and told them he had been assaulted. Governments and international bodies have a special duty to press this case.<\/p>\n

Mr Alam\u2019s contribution to photography has been truly global: he founded Drik, Bangladesh\u2019s first picture library and its\u00a0Majority World agency<\/a>, promoting photographers from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East; has\u00a0trained hundreds of photographers in South Asia<\/a>; and indeed is a visiting professor at the University of Sunderland. Charging such a high-profile figure is surely intended to have a chilling effect. To\u00a0defend Mr Alam is to defend the right of journalists, and citizens in general, to speak out in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

Sunil Babu Pant<\/a>\u00a0Said\u00a0Shahidul Alam is an incredible human bring and matured activist for all good. I was fortunate to have been photographed by Shahidul Alam when he visited Kathmandu around 2010, I was still a member of parliament of Nepal then. This profile picture of mine on my Facebook wall is taken by him then.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Copy :\u00a0https:\/\/www.theguardian.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathmandu\/Pahichan – The work of renowned photographer and social activist Shahidul Alam has appeared in publications worldwide, including the Guardian. Now attention is on the 63-year-old himself. Police in Bangladesh\u00a0have arrested him\u00a0over \u201cprovocative comments\u201d on Facebook; he was seized just after giving\u00a0an interview about protests\u00a0that have convulsed the country. As Mr Alam observed, demonstrations initially about road safety were fuelled by anger over issues including corruption and gagging of the media by the ruling Awami League.
\nThe resulting crackdown has seen police use teargas and rubber bullets on the streets \u2013 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":10656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1827,981,621,492,490,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diplomacy","category-model","category-news","category-opinion","category-slider","category-world"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10655"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10660,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10655\/revisions\/10660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}