FRIENDS of Bangladesh would be shocked to know of the warrant of arrest issued by a court against Mahfuz Anam, the owner-publisher of the Daily Star, one of the country’s most prestigious English dailies and a member of the Asian News Network of 22 South and South Asian newspapers.

The warrants got going after several cases of defamation and sedition were registered against Anam for publishing, nearly a decade ago, some reports alleging corruption by Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina Wajid, now prime minister. If convicted, Anam could face a two-year jail term, though the prime minister’s son wants a case of treason.

Law Minister Anisul Haq insists that it is not a warrant of arrest but a summons, but the editors’ council and various journalists’ organisation have condemned the issuance of summons, with Gholam Sarwar, chief of the Editors’ Council, calling it “inappropriate”, especially because many newspapers, and not just the Daily Star, had carried the leaked stories, based on information given by the caretaker military government in 2007-08.

As Mozammel Khan, convener of the Canadian Committee for Human Rights in Bangladesh, pointed out, Anam had gone on TV and admitted that the publication of the leaked reports was the “biggest mistake” he had made in his professional career. The government, as Khan rightly marked, should have drawn satisfaction from the fact that the allegations were not proved and that Anam had acknowledged his mistake by saying that he published them without an independent verification of the facts.

Earlier this month, I got a taste of Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian bent of mind when, in spite of the 15-day visa which the BD Deputy High Commission in Karachi gave me, I was told by Dhaka authorities I would not be allowed to stay longer than three days. The occasion was the Daily Star’s 25h anniversary, which the paper wanted to celebrate in a big way by inviting journalists from Saarc and Asean countries. It was a one-day gala celebration, with the guests reaching Dhaka on Feb 4 and leaving on the 6th.

I had looked forward to the event because I had last visited BD 30 years ago on the occasion of the founding of Saarc. I wanted to see and write about Bangladesh’s economic development, the capital city’s changing skyline, the fast-expanding middle class, and women’s participation in the country’s progress in a big way. Besides, I have friends in Bangladesh, including Abdul Subhan, who was with me at Dawn decades ago, and Fayza (nee Haq) de la Harpe, who was my colleague at The Sun, Karachi, now defunct. She is now one of the country’s leading columnists. I also wanted to meet some lawmakers and social activists to know their views about the polarisation that is threatening to rip apart the country’s social and political fabric and to write something that would not necessarily be anti-government. But when I requested my gracious hosts that my return flight be kept open, I felt sorry I had embarrassed them.

My hosts’ reticence was bewildering for me. So I contacted a source in Dhaka, who told me that the government had sought an assurance from the Daily Star that their guests would arrive on Feb 4 and leave promptly on the 6th. No one could overstay. I could still have flown to Dhaka and stayed on, but that would have embarrassed my hosts because of the undertaking they had given to a government that is waging war on free speech.

Anam doesn’t belong to the ruling party, his paper doesn’t toe the official line, and he has made Daily Star the fiercely independent paper it is. More important, since Sheikh Hasina has been preoccupied with her version of the 1971 trauma and war, she should recognise, as Bangladeshi patriots do, Anam’s role in what they call the ‘liberation war’ and his paper’s support for the so-called war crime trials in which her government seems to have specialised.

Despite the trappings of democracy, Bangladesh under the rule of Sheikh Hasina has become a police state in which the media and the opposition are hounded, government critics are jailed and people accused of alleged war crimes committed four decades ago are executed after trials that international rights agencies and observers consider a farce. Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League is in power because it has stolen an election. Previously, Bangladesh had elections under neutral governments; Sheikh Hasina amended the constitution and presided over an election which a large number of political parties, including the main opposition Bangladesh National Party headed by Khalda Zia, boycotted. International observers called it an electoral fraud.

As the Human Rights Watch 2015 report on the Awami League government’s performance said, security forces carried out “abductions, killings, and arbitrary arrests, particularly targeting opposition leaders and supporters”.

Anam is now being demonised, his effigies are being burnt on a cue from the ruling party, cases of defamation and sedition have been registered against him in many cities, and ruling party MPs allege in parliament that Anam was hand in glove with the intelligence agencies. Yet, a government lacking moral authority has taken no action against those intelligence agencies responsible for the leaks. As C.R. Abrar of Daily Star says, Anam is paying “an undue price” for his “candid self-criticism”, because it takes “immense courage to admit one’s shortcomings in public, particularly in a divided polity where passions rule over reason”.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2016