The obsession and delusion of a large number of Western outlets for an anti-democratic combination of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami become evident from the coverage in the run-down to the 12th national parliamentary election in Bangladesh.
NYTimes, Guardian, Agence France Press, Benar News, and The Diplomat among other outlets failed to offer space to the hundreds of victims who have fallen prey to BNP Jamaat violence including arson attacks on buses and trains in the name of an anti-democratic campaign waged since October 28 2023.
During a wave of blockade imposed by BNP Jamaat, hundreds of buses were torched and vandalized while a score of innocent people sustained burn injuries and over 12 lives perished throughout the country.
Ahead of the election, victims of violence formed human chains, held the BNP-Jamaat combine responsible for the attacks and sought justice these outlets failed even to cover their narrative, a glaring bias out in the open.
In a series of reports on the Bangladesh election, these outlets including AFP and NYTimes wrote the opposition movement was largely non-violent while questioning the human rights situation in Bangladesh, a display of agenda-driven work.
Ignoring the calls of these victims seems to be a strategic decision by the outlets but the same outlets offered spaces to whatever the opposition leaders are saying, like a mouthpiece or an ardent advocate of the combine before the world.
However, these outlets even remained ignorant of the exposure of CCTV footage showing BNP Jamaat men carrying out attacks. Even a call for blockade from the combine on the election was not deemed as anti-democratic by the same combine.
The portrayal of the combine that seeks to impose Shariah law as the principal opposition and projecting low voter turnout seems to appear as another misnomer.
Even when the opposition blockade rallies failed to gather any public support as people kept defying these undemocratic calls while election rallies drew a surge in turnout, these very outlets continued to project the opposition as a popular party.
Moreover, rights activists and minority leaders have already pulled up these outlets for the projection of Tarique Rahman, a fugitive criminal who now stays in London and runs BNP, described by liberals and a US envoy as “a doyen figure in corruption and communal politics”.
These are the same outlets that ran a make-the-world-believe campaign about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Middle Eastern countries and glorified Arab Spring, acting like a tool for the US establishment.
Now that voting has ended and the BNP-Jamaat duo failed to stop people from exercising their rights, these outlets waged an all-out campaign echoing the opposition tune that there is low voter turnout.
A US observer found such assertion a misnomer as turnout in Bangladesh is largely fair and free. Like the observer, millions of voters did not pay heed to the narratives spun by these outlets as they exercised their voting rights.