Asian News Blog

AS a Journalist I get to meet many interesting people and last night I met with three Bangladeshi journalists who came to visit Oldham as part of a week long tour organised by the Foreign Office to discover more about the UK Bangladeshi community.

The three reporters, Razaul Karim from the Daily Star, award winning reporter Tipu Sultan from the Daily Prothom Alo and diplomatic correspondent from the Daily Jugantor, Masud Karim met with local community members and councillors at the Westwood East Restaurant.

The Daily Star is Bangladesh's biggest English paper with 3 million readers. The Prothom Alo is actually one of the biggest daily Bengali papers in the country and their rival main rival is Jugantor. Each paper was based in the capital Dhaka and was manned with a minimum of 50 staff. On the Daily Star for example, they had 40 journalists, both men and women. Journalism was seen a great career to enter into in Bangladesh though sometimes dangerous!

Though their visit was short, all three reporters agreed that British bangladeshi life in the UK is not what they expected.

Razaul said: "I met many first generation Sylheti families in East London and it seemed to me that they are still living in Sylhet. many came to the UK in the 60s and 70s but they have not moved with the times.
"In Bangladesh we have more modern families living in the cities than in London. What surprised me even more, though some people have lived here all their lives, they could not speak English.
"In Dhaka people take great strides trying to learn the English Language.
"However, the second and third generation are very different of course. It's been very positive to see so many young Bangladeshis studying and entering different professional careers. I'm also greatly impressed with the restaurant trade which is still booming and contributes greatly to the British economy."

Head of Public Affairs at the British High Commission in Dhaka, William Arnall-Culliford, who was in charge of the visit, said one of the aims was to show a more positive aspect of the British Bangladeshi community.

He said the portrayal by the British media was often a negative one.

Said William: "The stories we read in Bangladesh are about issues like the hijab and veil or for example that Bangladeshi kids are not doing well in school compared to their other Asian counterparts etc.

"So it has been a change for these journalists to visit the UK and see for themselves what is happening and hopefully they will be able to go back and write about their experience of the British Bangladeshi community in the UK. So far it has been quite a positive visit."

What was interesting for me as a reporter was to find out what life was like for a reporter in Bangladesh.

First off all there is no specific course aimed at journalist students though editors recommend that people should at least have a degree or even an MA in English. In fact all Daily Star journalists must have a minimum degree in English.

Most of the training is on the job and a trainee can expect to start on 12,000 taka per month which is roughly about £110. Though very meagre in UK standards, it is in fact a reasonable wage in bangladesh and enough to get by on. After five years of training, reporters will be offered the title of a senior reporter and they will receive a government press accreditation card - a must have if you want to be taken seriously but even more importantly to get that all important payrise. Senior reporters can expect to earn between 20,000 - 25,000 taka which is roughly around £200-£250 pounds per month - again this is as seen as a good wage.

On the Daily Star, Rezaul told me that their structure for writing news stories and features was very similar to the UK though now t many of the national are beginning to follow the US standards as the text books they are beginning to follow are from the US. The paper was working closely with the British Council on training programmes for journalists to improve their English language.

The papers are sold for 8 taka ( 2 pence) and if they include a magazine supplement inside the price can rise to 13 taka (5 pence)!

Though journalism in England is very much of a safe career i.e. the chances of me being kidnapped and tortured by some corrupt politician is very unlikely - in Bangladesh it is actually the opposite. Write a defamatory article about someone in power you can either find yourself in court being sued if you're lucky or you can expect to be threatened, jumped on by a gang as your walking home and even killed.

Tipu Sultan found himself in a similar position a few years back. He's an investigative reporter and he found that writing the truth could have cost him his life! Tipu and had been following the daily criminal activities of a "godfather" who was also a leading politician, Joynal Hazari.

His articles upset this crimelord and death threats were made to Tipu to stop writing or else.......but this did not deter the enthusiastic reporter who went on to file even more articles. Then one day as he was leaving for home, Tipu was attacked, kidnapped and tortured by a gang of 15 knife wielding thugs. They were ordered by Hazari to smash the young journalist's legs and hands so that he would never be able to write again.

The gang did as they were told. They especially targeted Tipu's right hand - his writing hand. Although his assailants left him for dead on the side of a road, Tipu, miraculously survived.

Hazari denied he had anything to do with the attack and Tipu's assailants were never prosecuted. This is not new in Bangladesh - many journalists are attacked every year and the criminals often go unpunished.

However, Tipu recovered and went on to win the International Press Freedom Award in 2002 and is still actively involved in investigative journalism. In fact he is friends with Shumi Khan, a female journalist in Chittagong who I admire. Her articles about criminal activities also lead her to be kidnapped and tortured. She was stabbed but she survived and went on to win many national awards for her courageous reporting.

Said Tipu: "Many people expected me to leave journalism. But I entered this career so that I can write about the truth in our society and reveal people for who they really are especially rogue politicians who have no place in our country."

Well they sure are never short of good stories in Bangladesh - by the way they reassure me now is the safest time to travel to the country - with the army out in full force in the run up to the elections - the streets are much quieter and so are the stories they are working on.

They have invited me to spend a few weeks in Bangladesh to work on their papers - an offer I may even take up later this year.