Dainik Dinkal, the only newspaper of Bangladesh's opposition party has stopped publishing after the government passed an order to suspend it, stoking fears about media freedom in the south Asian nation.
The Bengali language paper, for three decades, has been the voice of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Foreign governments including the US have expressed concern about efforts by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to silence criticism and what they see as creeping authoritarianism. The Dainik Dinkal covers news stories that the mainstream newspapers, most of which are controlled by pro-government businesspeople, rarely do, the Guardian reported.
Stories carried in the paper many a times include arrests of BNP activists and regarding thousands of fake cases against their supporters. Dhaka district authorities had ordered its shutdown on December 26, but, it continued publication after making an appeal at the Press Council headed by a top high court judge, an AFP report reads.
“The council rejected our appeal yesterday (Sunday), upholding the district magistrate’s order to stop our publication,” Shamsur Rahman Shimul Biswas, managing editor of the newspaper, told AFP.
Shamsur Rahman Shimul Biswas said the authorities of the daily would soon take the necessary steps to resume publication.
