Bangladesh rejects Al Jazeera report, calls it smear campaign

The government of Bangladesh has rejected the desperate “smear campaign” instigated by extremists and their allies, working from London and elsewhere.

Dhaka also regretted that Al Jazeera has allowed itself to become an instrument for their malicious political designs aimed at destabilising the secular democratic government of Bangladesh with a proven track record of extraordinary socio-economic development and progress.   

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement, said the government of Bangladesh has learnt of a false and defamatory report titled “All the Prime Minister’s Men” by Al Jazeera news channel.

"The report is nothing more than a misleading series of innuendos and insinuations in what is apparently a politically motivated “smear campaign” by notorious individuals associated with the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami extremist group, which has been opposing the progressive and secular principles of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh since its very birth as an independent nation in 1971," the ministry said in a statement on Monday night. 

The fact that the report’s historical account fails to even mention the horrific genocide in 1971 in which Jamaat perpetrators killed millions of Bengali civilians and raped more than 200,000 Bengali women, is but one reflection of the political bias in Al Jazeera’s coverage and that of its principal commentator, David Bergman, convicted by International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh for challenging the official death toll of 1971 Liberation War, it said.

It is noted that the main “source” of Al Jazeera’s allegations is an alleged international criminal claimed to be a “psychopath” by Al-Jazeera itself. 

"There is not a shred of evidence linking the Prime Minister and other State Institutions of Bangladesh to this particular individual, and it is highly irresponsible for an international news channel to draw conclusions on the basis of the words of a mentally unstable person," MoFA said.

It is also not surprising that the report aligns with the string of anti-Bangladesh propaganda habitually orchestrated by a few convicted absconding criminals and discredited individuals patronised by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, which on certain occasions have conspired with international extremist groups and news media specially the Al Jazeera, the statement reads.