AL, BCL men, cops attack journalists

Three journalists were assaulted by activists of Awami League and its student wing BCL yesterday and another one was allegedly beaten up by police, while they were covering the city corporation polls in Sylhet.

Masuk Hridoy and Dwoha Chowdhury from The Daily Star were assaulted at Jamia Modinatul Ulum Darussalam Madrasa polling centre while Misbah Uddin from the Bangla daily Prothom Alo was assaulted at Dorga Gate Government Primary School centre.

Meanwhile, police beat up Abdullah Al Bappi, a photojournalist of Daily Naya Diganta, when he tried to take pictures of people casting their votes at Shahjalal Jamia Islamia Qamil Madrasa polling centre.

Several ruling party men attacked Masuk around 11:20am when he was trying to photograph a vehicle bearing the flag of Islami Andolan Bangladesh as it arrived at the polling centre.

Around 80 ruling party activists had gathered there and many among them were seen entering the polling centre.

As Masuk began taking photos, several men wearing AL badges confronted him and snatched his camera, damaging its lenses.  Among them, one Mahfuz hit him several times.

The AL men then assaulted Dwoha, the Sylhet correspondent of the English daily, as he tried to take pictures of the attack on Masuk.

They later returned the cameras to both journalists after a ward councilor candidate and an on-duty police officer intervened.  

Meanwhile, BCL men allegedly beat up a Prothom Alo journalist Misbah when he entered the centre, our correspondent reports, quoting Ujjal Mehdi, the Prothom Alo Sylhet Bureau chief.

According to our correspondents present at the centre, right before the attack on Misbah, the Sylhet unit AL general secretary and organising secretary, who were visiting the centre, had asked journalists to leave the centre saying that “voting was going on peacefully.”

Elsewhere, daily Naya Diganta's Abdullah was beaten up by police as he tried to take pictures of vote casting around 1:45pm in the centre. Police snatched his cameras and returned it after deleting all the photographs.

The centre's Returning Officer Jamil Ahmed declined to make any comment.