The government has dismissed the Al Jazeera news channel report on Bangladesh as “false and defamatory” and called it a desperate “smear campaign” instigated by extremists and their allies, working in London and elsewhere.
“The report is nothing more than a misleading series of innuendos and insinuations in what is apparently a politically motivated “smear campaign” by notorious individuals associated with the Jamaat-e-Islami extremist group,” a foreign ministry statement said on Tuesday.
The statement said the Jamaat-e-Islami extremist group has been opposing the progressive and secular principles of Bangladesh since its very birth as an independent nation in 1971.
Al Jazeera aired the false and defamatory report titled ‘All the Prime Minister’s Men’ on Monday.
Security experts say the Al Jazeera news item was aimed to tarnish the image of the government and state institutions.
“In the report, they (Al Jazeera) have tried to malign the government and the military. A question naturally arises if they have joined those who are campaigning for unseating the government,” said Maj Gen (retd) Md Abdur Rashid.
He referred to the campaign Al Jazeera had launched to thwart the trial of infamous war criminals in an international tribunal in Bangladesh.
The foreign ministry statement said Bangladesh regrets that Al Jazeera had allowed itself to become an instrument for the extremist group’s malicious political designs aimed at destabilising the secular democratic government of Bangladesh with a proven track record of extraordinary socio-economic development and progress.
It noted that the main ‘source’ of Al Jazeera allegations is an alleged international criminal whom Al-Jazeera itself claimed to be a “psychopath”.
“There is not a shred of evidence linking the Prime Minister and other State Institutions of Bangladesh to this particular individual, and it is highly irresponsible for an international news channel to draw conclusions on the basis of the words of a mentally unstable person,” said the statement.
Pointing that the report’s historical account failed to even mention the horrific genocide in 1971, in which Jamaat perpetrators killed millions of Bengali civilians and raped more than 200,000 Bengali women, the statement said, this is the reflection of the political bias in the Al Jazeera coverage.
The statement said the principal commentator of the report David Bergman was convicted by the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh for challenging the official death toll of 1971 Liberation War.
Bergman began a global campaign to save the Jamaat people who had committed war criminals during the Liberation War and faced trial in the Tribunal.
“It is also not surprising that the report aligns with the string of anti-Bangladesh propaganda habitually orchestrated by a few convicted absconding criminals and discredited individuals patronised by Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh, which on certain occasions have conspired with international extremist groups and news media especially the Al Jazeera,” said the statement.
The report also featured the statement of Tasneem Khalil, who has link with the anti-liberation force and went into self-exile during the caretaker government to escape trial.
