DAVID BERGMAN
Bangladeshi military officers stand accused of ordering companies not to advertise in major newspapers PHOTO/Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP
Officers from the army’s intelligence agency have instructed major companies to stop advertising in Bangladesh’s two leading independent newspapers, sources told Al Jazeera. The demand for foreign-owned corporations to stop advertising in the Prothom Alo and Daily Star newspapers was allegedly given by officers from the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), following the August 16 publication of a story on the army’s killing of five men in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
Later that day, army officials contacted both papers and criticised them for describing the dead men as “indigenous” people instead of “terrorists”, sources said on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Since then, Prothom Alo the most widely read newspaper in the country with daily sales of more than 500,000 copies – has lost at least 35 percent of its advertising revenue, while its English-language sister paper Daily Star’srevenue has plummeted about 25 percent.
Ziauddin Adil, who runs media buyer company Top of Mind, estimated in the past month the two newspapers lost at least $1.2m in advertising revenue.
On the day the articles were published, Bangladeshi telecommunications firm Grameenphone received a call from an army officer working at DGFI, instructing it to stop advertising in the two newspapers, a source said.
The Norwegian company Telenor, which is the majority shareholder of Grameenphone, confirmed in a statement to Al Jazeera that “along with several other large corporations, [it] received an instruction from the authorities to stop advertisements in two leading newspapers in Bangladesh”.
Al Jazeera confirmed from several corporate sources – who requested anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity – that Bangladesh’s three other major foreign-owned mobile phone companies – Robi Axiata Banglalink Airtel along with consumer goods multinational Unilever also received and complied with the instruction.
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