Swedish police authorities on Thursday received the submission of a criminal file against Netra News Editor Tasneem Khalil for what the petitioners claimed "a consistent effort to peddle a wave of disinformation and slanders against the government of Bangladesh through the offshore portal".
With a motto of creating panic and confusion among public, using the website, YouTube, and Facebook pages of the offshore outlet Netra News, Tasneem Khalil, an editor of NN now residing in Sweden, has been playing a key role, masquerading as a journalist, in the systematic, coordinated and ceaseless manner of "spreading smears and rumors to confuse the public and often casting as persons against the Prime Minister and her family members”, according to the submission.
From creating and spreading news about the government initiative on Corona pandemic in Bangladesh, human rights violation, creating hatred on the Bangladesh Army’s mission in the United Nations, they left no stone unturned to destroy the popularity of the current government of Bangladesh around the world.
While most of such ill efforts have been rejected by a number of national and international outlets, they kept lying and, at times, played the soft Islamist spokesperson propaganda whenever actions are taken against radicals.
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All European Awami League President M Nazrul Islam, All European AL unit Secretary Mujibur Rahman, AL leaders Mahfuzur Rahman Bhuyian, Hedayet ul Islam Shelly among other filed the submission with Sweden Police.
“They received our submission and we had an hour long discussion with respective authorities today where we call for an intervention to hold Khalil responsible for such misadventures that coincide with a similar effort unleashed by a group of BNP activists and radical Islamists,” said M Nazrul Islam.
The formula has managed to keep Netra News stay in news, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
According to the submission, when the country was witnessing a steady decline in the pandemic since the virus was first detected in Bangladesh on March 8, 2020, Mr. Khalil yet again used his Facebook page and offshore portal to spread a complete rumor — “without government action over 50,000 may die in Covid in Bangladesh”.
Again while Bangladesh was ranked globally with lower death toll from the virus at early last year, predicting and spreading such hypothetical high death figures in the country is obviously no “independent “and “free” “journalism” that Mr. Khalil always used to introduce himself.
In reality, over the year 2020 as the government was trying its best to arrange treatment for the people, but again slandering the government with cooked up lies like — “without government action”— at the time of pandemic appears as no credible work of journalism rather like behaving like an anti-government activist.
However, till date the global death toll in Bangladesh in well-documented and ironically no much further claims are posted by Tasneem Khalil either from his Facebook or with his portal.
Bangladesh has been singled out, by Netra News, for UN Action because of army chief Aziz Ahmed's acts and will soon face a drastic reduction in UN peacekeeping quotas -- on the contrary, the quota has risen and the ghost of penal action has not materialised.
It predicted Indian vaccines will never arrive, again they were proved wrong.
Pointing to a media story on official arrest of a “spiritual” leader, by law enforcers, of radical outfit Ansar Al Islam, responsible for unleashing a wave of target killings against free thinkers and bloggers a couple of years back, Khalil wrote in his post, “Any alliance of radicals is better than state sponsored terrorism”.
In reality, no other mainstream national outlets have reported in favor of Mr. Khalil’s claim but such a call by Mr. Khalil, surely look like he has been playing for the spokesperson for the militant outfit.
As part of his continuous efforts to create a complete chaos in the army, Mr. Khalil posted this status questioning the decision of deployment of BD troops to ensure general public follow health protocols on the streets.
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He also wrote, “The army chief has ensured the best treatment for himself and his family” but “provided lower quality safety gears and failed to arrange treatment facilities for the soldiers to be deployed”.
However, it is evident from an abundance of media reports that the strategy of the government has worked as the Covid causality is far lower in Bangladesh in comparison with many other countries.
And Bangladesh army officially announced death figures in the entire force and arrangements made for treatment of the troops. As expected, this time also not a single shred of evidence has been presented by him, no wonder the real scenario about better treatment facilities for the force alongside the lower causality figures in the force, as reported by national and international outlets later.
According to Nazrul Islam, as we have been seen one editor of netra news David Bergman happened to be the son in law of Dr Kamal hossain, who had in the past and has recently called for ouster of sheikh hasina while the other one — Tasneen Khalil — has been echoing the smears against the government.
