The Special Branch of Bangladesh Police has withdrawn one of its officers from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport over the recent incident of alleged harassment of New Age editor Nurul Kabir.
The agency has also launched an investigation into the incident, according to a Special Branch statement shared with journalists.
‘The Special Branch regrets the incident at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, which prompted eminent editor Nurul Kabir to say that he was harassed by police officers,’ said the SB in a statement on Sunday.
The claimed that the unfortunate incident happened due to a massive ‘blocked list’ of individuals created by the now deposed government of Sheikh Hasina.
Thousands of people were put in the ‘blocked list’ meant to be harassed at the time of their overseas tours or stopped from travelling abroad, the statement mentioned.
read more: New Age editor faces harassment at Dhaka airport
The Special Branch said that following the assumption of office by the interim government, it started removing the politically connected people, dissidents, journalists, and rights activists from the blocked list.
‘Much of this work is being done manually. As a result, some names of dissidents and journalists are still there. We have now expedited our efforts to clean up the list. Once again, we are sorry for the unfortunate incident,’ the statement said.
There were names of over 10,000 individuals in the ‘blocked list,’ according to officials concerned.
The police statement came a day after the Chief Adviser Office of the interim government on Saturday ordered an investigation into the recent incident of alleged harassment of New Age editor Nurul Kabir at the airport.
‘Nurul Kabir has been one of our most respected editors, a leading voice of reason, and a top champion of journalistic integrity during his long career. Chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus has ordered an investigation into the incident,’ the chief adviser’s press wing said in a statement on Saturday evening.
The move came hours after Nurul Kabir, on his verified Facebook account, alleged that he had been facing harassment at the hands of the immigration authorities at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport every time he travelled abroad for over two decades.
‘This time, on November 18, as I was going abroad for a media conference, I expected that my days of harassment at the Dhaka airport had been over, at least for some time. I was wrong. It has rather doubled this time—one hour while departing and one hour while returning home on November 22,’ he wrote in the post.
The harassment included intelligence officials taking his passport away, interrogating him about the purposes of his visits, keeping him waiting for about an hour, and photographing his passport pages in violation of his privacy, Nurul Kabir said.
‘We sincerely regret the incident. The interim government will not tolerate harassment of any journalists in the country,’ said the statement from the Chief Adviser’s Office.
Chief adviser’s press secretary Shafiqul Alam at a press conference at the Foreign Service Academy said that the government decided to make a policy to prevent any kind of harassments at airports during the immigration process.
Source: New Age
