Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists (BFUJ) on Friday demanded a ban on the airing of controversial Qatar-based television channel Al Jazeera.
The federation also condemned the running of series of biased news items by the channel.
“The channel favoured the war criminals and their news items tarnished the image of Bangladesh at the international level,” it said.
BFUJ President Molla Jalal and acting Secretary General Abdul Majid made the demand in a statement issued on Friday.
In the statement, the BFUJ leaders said that Al Jazeera has been constantly playing role against Bangladesh and that the channel tried to make the trial of crimes against humanity controversial at the international level.
They urged all the journalists to come forward to foil the conspiracy of the biased, anti-Bangladesh and ill-motivated news channel.
Al Jazeera contradicted the official count of the martyrs of the Liberation War. They claimed that not three million, only three to five lakh people were killed by the Pakistan Army during the Liberation War.
The BFUJ leaders said that Al Jazeera helped Jamaat-e-Islami brand writers as ‘atheist bloggers’ to serve their political interest. “Moreover, Al Jazeera misguided people with their wrong report regarding the 2013 Hefajat-e-Islam protest incident.”
“Al Jazeera has already been banned in many countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt, for their alleged involvement in terrorism, airing provocative news items and so on. We also demand a ban on Al Jazeera in Bangladesh,” BFUJ leaders added.