The media in Bangladesh enjoys complete freedom : Bangladesh delegation

New York, 27 April : The media in Bangladesh is enjoying full freedom as the Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is utmost sincere to ensure the constitutional rights of the people including freedom of expression.

This was stated by the Bangladesh delegation at the 38^th Session of the Committee on Information of the UN at its headquarters here today.

The delegation said, The Constitution of Bangladesh as framed by the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1972 within a year of our great Independence guarantees freedom of expression of the people. To ensure the right of the people, the Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina since 2009 has implemented various steps including scrapping the Code of Criminal Procedure provision for directly issuing arrest warrant against journalists, writers, and others for writing or saying anything defamatory.

In Bangladesh, every day, 428 media-listed newspaper are being published and 172 of them are from Dhaka. The present Government, so far, awarded licenses to 32 new private TV channels and 24 FM and 32 community radio stations and framed Journalist Welfare Trust Act in 2014 for providing aid to distressed journalists. The Government passed “Right to Information Act” and the Information Commission remains vigilant to ensure the rights to information of rural people also, the delegation stressed.

The annual session of the Committee on Information was commenced yesterday and it would be continued up to 6^th of the next month.

During the two weeks of the session, the 193 member and the observers of the UN will consider the three reports that was submitted by the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the activities of the Department of Public Information (DPI) in the areas of strategic communications services, news service and outreach and knowledge services.

Member countries will deliver their observation on the reports and place their recommendations to improve the activities of the DPI to establish meaningful communication between the UN and the people around the world and ensure multilingualism.

At the end of the deliberation, the Committee will adopt a resolution based on the recommendations of the member countries.

Appreciating the effort of the DPI for arranging programs at various international days of global importance, the delegation mentioned the day-long program recently organized by the DPI to observe the World Autism Awareness Day where the DPI invited Ms. Saima Wazed Hossain, the Chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on Autism in Bangladesh and member of the WHO’s Advisory Panel on Mental Health as an expert panelist.

The Government of Bangladesh under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, since 2010, has been implementing a unique “Bangladesh Model” to build social awareness for  disabled persons especially autism and to ensure rights of the persons with disability which is being replicated regionally and beyond.

Appreciating the role of the DPI in disseminating information that is generated every day at the UN through internet as well as through traditional media to 7.2 billion people of the world, the delegation urged the DPI to monitor regularly the work of the UNICs across the world including Bangladesh especially to promote multilateralism.

Pointing to the international commitment including the Istanbul Program of Action for LDCs, adopted by the UN Member States in 2011, to take proactive initiatives to provide everyone in the LDCs affordable access to Internet by 2020 which has also been reinforced in Sustainable Development Agenda, the delegation urged the developed and developing countries to take proactive measures to fulfil the commitment.

It will help ensure the pledge made by the world leaders here last September for Sustainable Development Agenda that “no one will be left behind”, the delegation observed.

Bangladesh, however, has reached the average of the developing world in this regard. 37 per cent people of the country are now using internet as a result of implementation of the policy of “Digital Bangladesh”, envisioned and led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the delegation said.

Drawing attention of the UN member countries to Bangla, the primer language of about 300 million people around the world, the delegation said, the sacrifices of Bangalees for their mother language was recognized by the UN as the 21^st February is being observed across the world as the International Mother Language Day. The delegation urged the DPI and other UN agencies to observe the Day in the UN annually to reinforce the importance of preserving mother languages around the world, and promoting multilingual education.

Elaborating the steps taken by Bangladesh in preserving mother languages across the world, the delegation said, Bangladesh has set up the International Mother Language Institute a comprehensive language archive would be established and research would be conducted. Bangladesh welcomes interested partner countries to this end, the delegation observed.

The delegation also urged the DPI to perform more activities in digital formats in Bangla including broadcast daily news through UN Radio Bangla.