Blanket threat to journalists

The authorities can not keep their eyes shut to the trend any longer. The barbaric killing of Humayun Kabir Balu and Manik Saha in Khulna should have been eye-openers to the magnitude of risk-taking by serious journalists on their daily rounds of work. The journalists simply do their jobs. And if that goes against the interests of a certain group, should attempts to mute their voices with threats and intimidation be allowed to go unpunished?

The government pledges to bring perpetrators to book whenever reacting to violent acts against journalists, but the assurances are hardly fulfilled. It never tires of saying that the journalists are working with total freedom. But how can professional freedom be exercised without a minimum guarantee for physical safety? The most frustrating part of the experience is that no punishment has yet been meted out to either the threat-givers or actual murderers.

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We have reasons to believe that the police can catch these criminals if they will to do so. The question before the government is: whether the criminals should be allowed to continue to intimidate us, make us feel more insecure than we already are, or we should be allowed to do our jobs without any fear of reprisal from any quarter whatsoever.