Political upheaval in Bangladesh this year saw Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina forced to flee the country after 15 years in power. She left after weeks of deadly protests in which at least five journalists were killed and hundreds of others injured.
The unrest started as a peaceful demand from university students to abolish quotas in civil service jobs but spread to become a wider anti-government protest.
Journalists — many of whom risked their lives to provide responsible reporting throughout the unrest — became targets of violence from both government forces and protesters.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reported that nine TV stations were vandalized during the protests. Later in the year, the headquarters of the Daily Star and an office of the Prothom Alo newspaper also came under attack. Even before those events, RSF’s Media Freedom Index ranked Bangladesh 165 among 180 countries, with a media environment described as “hostile.”
Reporters in the country have learned how to juggle long-standing government censorship, poor pay, and widespread layoffs, and in the media space it is well-known that troubling realities prevail.
Media ownership is largely concentrated in the hands of pro-government business entities, more focused on suppressing investigative reporting than promoting it. As a result, public trust in mainstream media has eroded significantly. This loss of trust has made journalists on the ground increasingly vulnerable. Efforts to challenge such attitudes have been limited, but they have not been entirely absent.
Writing this yearly roundup, we discovered a wide array of impactful stories. On top of covering diverse issues, Bangladeshi reporters’ efforts to challenge authority under extreme authoritarianism were clearly evident. They reported on alleged human rights violations by law enforcement agencies, corruption, and misconduct in sectors like agriculture, the environment, and energy. They also tackled climate change, which remains a critical issue.
Count of a Carnage
An investigation into the casualties from the protests found many people were shot in the head and chest. Image: Screenshot, The Daily Star
As protesters surged through the streets of the capital, Dhaka, law enforcement agencies struggled to maintain control. But according to this report by The Daily Star, they often used violent force to suppress the student-led protest that ultimately forced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down. The Star team obtained hundreds of autopsy reports to conclude that most of those who died had bullet wounds to the head, chest, stomach, and abdomen.
The team examined death registries, visited morgues and graveyards, spoke with the victims’ families, examined photographs of the weapons being used by law enforcement, and shared their findings with firearm experts. These experts told them that some of the firearms used to quell the protests — including live and rubber bullets — are not designed to disperse crowds but to kill.
“Our analysis of the… casualties shows that deaths from gunshots spiked after Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) was called in alongside an overwhelming number of police, [elite paramilitary force] RAB, Ansar, riot police, Armed Police Battalion and SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) members,” the reporters noted.
The chiefs of police and BGB did not respond to reporters’ requests for comment on whether there was an explicit order to shoot at protesters, while a RAB spokesperson said “no directive was given to open fire.” The Daily Star published this story at the height of the protests, raising widespread questions about whether the use of force had been proportionate.
Charity Meat In Officials’ Kitchens
Image: Screenshot, illustration, Daily Samakal
Every year the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sends a large food donation during Qurbani Eid, a goodwill offering intended to feed some of the underprivileged people of Bangladesh. But this report by the Daily Samakal — which started with a tip-off — painted a grim picture of how officials of the old regime allegedly misappropriated the donation. According to the report, the Saudi government sent the Directorate of Disaster Management 372 tons of lamb meat in January 2024, which was supposed to be distributed to the needy and to orphanages across the country. Samakal investigated 10 districts where they managed to get official documents, and where they claim government officials actually dispensed the meat to their relatives — allegations which they investigated further through analysis of videos uploaded on social media. The story unpacks how a nexus of government officials and local public representatives took over the distribution process, seemingly depriving the underprivileged of their fair share. The Ministry of Disaster Management, the authority responsible for overseeing the distribution of the donation, pledged to ensure that the distribution system would be free of leaks in future, and promised to investigate the issue thoroughly.
Forests Being Razed For Cassava Farming
Image: Screenshot, Business Standard
The forests of the Chittagong Hill Tracts are a pivotal biodiversity hotspot, but they are under threat. According to this story by The Business Standard, cassava farming is denuding the hills, and leading to the razing of hundreds of acres of hilly forest to make space for cassava cultivation. This strategy is impacting conservation efforts, and leaves the region’s wildlife facing an increasingly hostile environment, putting the habitat of the birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians at risk. After the reporter was tipped off about the impact of cassava farming and its impact by a citizen’s platform, he went to the field to speak to various stakeholders, including leaseholders, farmers, wildlife experts, and corporate firms investing in cassava plantations there. Monocultures can pose environmental risk, increasing damage and intensifying the impact on the soil, which in turn can lead to landslides among other factors responsible for forest degradation, the reporter found. An alarming picture of possible future harm also emerged during the reporting, amid claims that big agricultural companies are planning to expand the farming of the crop in the area.
A ‘Death Squad’ in Blue Helmets
A stock image featuring officers of Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion. Image: Shutterstock
Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite paramilitary unit, has a reputation for ruthlessness, with members of the unit having been accused of widespread human rights abuses. But according to this investigation — a collaboration between Netra, Deutsche Welle, and Süddeutsche Zeitung — more than 100 military and police officers who had served with the RAB were rewarded by the old regime with a plum assignment in a UN peacekeeping mission instead of being held accountable for misconduct. The investigation brought to light what reporters at Netra dubbed the “profoundly flawed vetting process,” which allowed officers accused of human right violations to take part in a mission designed to protect the civilians of war-torn countries.
The report was investigated through the accounts of whistleblowers, by checking photos uploaded on social media accounts linking RAB officers to UN missions, and by corroborating one man’s UN deployment with the help of the daily running routes he loaded onto an app. The story also used classified military personnel files and UN deployment lists. A UN peacekeeping force spokesperson told Netra in response that the organization “does not receive detailed information about the professional history of contingent members,” while another noted that the countries who supply troops are responsible for carrying out a human rights screening on the personnel they put forward.
Population Puzzle
Aerial View Cityscape of Chittagong City in Bangladesh. Image: Shutterstock
What is the population of Chittagong City Corporation? According to the most recent population survey, this large port city on the southeastern coast of Bangladesh is home to 3.4 million citizens. However, this figure jumps to six or seven million in various government documents.
Curious about this discrepancy, reporter Sharmin Rima launched an investigation for C-Voice and Protidiner Bangladesh to try and establish where this “ghost” population might have come from. Scouring hundreds of documents, using freedom of information requests, and speaking with a dozen officials, she discovered that inflated figures can lead to certain projects receiving extra funds. The city corporation’s financial allocations are based on population size: the higher the population, the larger the allocation. Her reporting found some sizable population discrepancies in official documents. For instance, in one document, Chittagong City Corporation reported a population of 6.8 million. Eight months later, in another project document, the figure had increased to 10 million — an apparent population growth of more than three million in just eight months.
The former mayor of the Chittagong City Corporation outright denied any fabrication of population data and suggested the blame may lie with other stakeholders. Meanwhile, the Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation Division promised to be more vigilant with the use of data in future.
Where Buffalo No Longer Roam
Image: Shutterstock
This story by The Daily Star vividly portrayed how an island in the Bay of Bengal that is home to 12,000 people is bearing the brunt of the sea level rise induced by climate change. The rising sea levels have forced some farmers from their homes — turning them into climate refugees — as parts of the island have been engulfed by the waters or hit by “relentless tides.” A diminished green pasture area has resulted in a significant drop in buffalo populations and milk production, hitting the island’s economy. The number of buffalo on one island — Urur Char — has gone from 35,000 to 5,700 in the last decade, the report noted.
The Daily Star used satellite images, data from the livestock department, and testimony from buffalo farmers to investigate the story. That the impact of rising seas causes a chain reaction is evident in the report, as the number of buffalo drops, so does the production of milk and yogurt forcing many of the sellers to switch their profession.
Subsidies ‘Stolen,’ Farmers Exploited
A government plan to mechanize agriculture initially impressed many farmers in Bangladesh. Under the plan, thousands of farmers across the country were supposed to receive machines for paddy harvesting, with the project offering subsidies covering 50% to 70% of the cost. But according to this Channel 24 investigation, members of a government agency instead exploited marginalized farmers. In some cases, they reported, government officials failed to purchase the machines altogether, leaving farmers without the promised equipment and misappropriating the entire allocation. In other cases, they claimed substandard machines were distributed, which never functioned properly. Despite this, farmers were still required to pay the remaining costs for the faulty equipment.
The investigation gathered extensive documentation, interviewed stakeholders, and exposed the identities of those reporters said were responsible for corrupting a scheme meant to help the poor. After the investigation was aired, a government evaluation team from the Department of Agriculture formed a committee to identify those accused of misappropriating the money.
Not Qualified For Admission, Yet Police Chief Is Now a Ph.D.
The University of Dhaka. Image: Shutterstock
Convention has it that in order to gain access to the doctoral programs at the University of Dhaka — one of the most prestigious educational establishments in the country — would-be students need to show they scored over 50% in their earlier studies. But this story by Prothom Alo investigated the case of a former police chief, digging into how people in power can receive an academic degree despite lacking the necessary marks and qualifications. According to reporters, the police chief in question did not have a mandatory honors degree and 50% marks in all public exams to obtain the degree from the business faculty of Dhaka University. He was also the director general of the RAB (Rapid Action Battalion), an entity sanctioned by the US for human rights violations while studying for the doctorate. According to Prothom Alo, which based its reporting on an analysis of all the educational certificates of the police chief in question, a faculty head relaxed the conditions to facilitate the police chief’s admission. Following the report, the then Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University said that the conditions should not have been relaxed, and pledged to evaluate the program that had been granting opportunities for advanced studies to influential individuals.
Sheikh Sabiha AlamSheikh Sabiha Alam is the bureau chief for AFP in Dhaka, and a former Bangla editor for GIJN. She previously worked as a senior reporter for Protho Alam and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard.