In August 2024, as the Bangladeshi youth intensified protests against the Sheikh Hasina regime, the student leaders wanted to invite Muhammad Yunus to lead their cause. And it has now emerged that an AFP journalist played a key role in connecting Yunus with the protesters.
Yunus's former press secretary Shafiqul Alam, who was Shishir's former colleague at AFP, on Wednesday revealed in a social media post that Qadaruddin Shishir was the trusted bridge-builder the students needed. Operating out of the AFP Dhaka bureau while Sheikh Hasina was still in power, Shishir secretly facilitated initial discussions between the two sides, revealed Alam. Yunus was in France at the time.
"Sitting just a yard away from my desk in the AFP Dhaka bureau, he managed this high-stakes operation in complete secrecy. Only a select few trusted individuals knew what was happening. It was Shishir who first approached the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner on behalf of the student leaders and facilitated the initial talks between the two parties," wrote Alam.
The former press secretary said the initial contact occurred two days before Hasina fled the country.
"Hasina would remain in power for two more days, yet her brutal security machine—notorious for mass killings and abductions—never caught a whisper of it. Had they discovered what was happening, Shishir and our entire AFP team would likely have ended up in an Aynaghar (house of mirrors secret prison)," he added.
He was referring to the secret detention facility in Bangladesh called Aynaghar, where prisoners were allegedly tortured and disappeared without trace.
Alam added that Shishir recorded video evidence of protest crackdowns. "Throughout it all, Shishir remained remarkably cool and composed, even as he quietly started gathering video evidence of the cold-blooded murders being committed by the regime," he said.
Who is Qadaruddin Shishir?
Qadaruddin Shishir, who was then the Bangladesh Editor for AFP Fact Check from 2021 to 2025, is currently the editor of The Dissent, an independent investigative news outlet based in Dhaka. His focus areas include tackling election disinformation, cybercrime and communal rumours.
Considered a pioneer in fact-checking journalism in Bangladesh, he co-founded BD FactCheck in 2017 and also led the fact-checking desk at Boom Bangladesh in 2020-21. Shishir had previously worked in Jamuna Television as a new media researcher and with the Daily New Nation as a reporter.
