To millions of readers and newsmakers throughout the world, Blitz enjoys highest esteem as being a source of untwisted information, whereas during the past 21 years, this newspaper has played the crucial role of a news leader on a number of occasions. On the other hand, a multi-billion-dollar publication venture The Daily Star, which is run under the leadership of Mahfuz Anam (English meaning cowherd) has always been feeling envy of Blitz because of his absolute failure in attaining even a fraction of the repute and influence of this newspaper. Being an agenda-driven propaganda box, Daily Star does not feel shy in serving the purpose of the anti-Bangladesh elements, club of crooks and vested interest groups as their loyal propaganda machinery. Moreover, Mahfuz Anam lacks substantial knowledge on geopolitics, while he champions the art of promoting Islamists, jihadists, terrorists, crooks, corrupts, culprits and even Al Qaeda. His newspaper is the platform for anti-Bangladesh and jihadist elements. Moreover, although Anam is considered as a blue-eyed-boy by most of the Western missions in Bangladesh, including the US Embassy, they fail to realize – this man’s heart is polluted with the poison of anti-Semitism, jihadism and hatred towards “non-Muslim” nations. In brief – investing billions of dollars behind Mahfuz Anam is a total waste – which its owners at Transcom Group need to realize.
On February 1, 2024, Mahfuz Anam’s Daily Star published propaganda stuff – possibly funded by BNP targeting Blitz. Reason behind publishing this content – which is written by an individual named Qadaruddin Shishir – a member of Jamaat-e-Islami – is to save BNP from being known as an ultra-Islamist and Al Qaeda connected element, while second agenda of Anam-Qadaruddin duo is to hide the fact about BNP’s direct involvement in recently launched “India Out” notoriety.
In the propaganda stuff titled “Fact-check: Did BNP really launch an ‘India Out’ campaign?”, Qadaruddin said: “… I was well aware of a “boycott India” campaign brewing among Bangladeshis on online social platforms like Facebook, X, and YouTube. To the best of my knowledge, the movement was initiated by social media influencers—some of whom are known as critics of the Awami League government. But I could not instantly recall any media reports about BNP or any other political parties talking about boycotting Indian products or expressing their support for the developing social media crusade. Hence, I checked on Google and YouTube to redress my ignorance and try to discover news related to the development. The search engines surprised me with a bunch of results including news articles in English and Hindi that claimed Bangladesh’s opposition party BNP and its leaders had launched an “India Out” movement. All the reports are from different Indian outlets such as Zee News, India TV, ABP Live, Aaj Tak, News 18 India, Republic Bharat, TV9 Bharatvarsh, Oneindia Hindi, Times Now, Navbharat, and many others. But no Bangladeshi media outlet reported on this. I wondered: would it not have been the norm for journalists in Bangladesh to have broken the story first?”
Look into ignorance of this Jamaat man! He does not know the news was first published in Blitz giving specific evidence of BNP men’s direct involvement in pushing-forwards “India Out” agenda. Secondly, he did not mention one very important point – for the past many years, the majority of the English-language news outlets in Bangladesh have been covertly or overtly sympathetic to BNP and been mostly trying to skip anything that goes against this ultra-Islamist force.
Commenting on Blitz, Jamaat-e-Islami member and notoriously anti-India and anti-Hindu Qadaruddin wrote, “In the past, the Blitz was exposed [a non-functional link] by fact-checkers [the so-called fact-checker is Shihsir himself] and journalists’ rights organisations [here is refer to a ridiculous statement issued by CPJ in defense of a jihadist-terrorist] as a source of political disinformation”.
Most importantly Jamaat member Qadaruddin refers to Blitz as a website, which clearly proves his anger at this internationally acclaimed anti-militancy newspaper. Or, if he does not know the difference between website and newspaper – people sitting at the AFP headquarters in Paris should immediately sack him.
But the main agenda of Mahfuz Anam and Qadaruddin is clearly proved when the article – commenting on ultra-Islamist BNP says, “The original Blitz report was based on a source referred to as “it has been learnt”—meaning no source at all! The wording used when introducing the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) says a lot about what the article was trying to portray. In no way can BNP be identified as an “Islamist” party, let alone be called an “ultra-Islamist” one. The loaded language of the Blitz article, lack of any sources and evidence to support its main claim, and the website’s record of spreading political disinformation against independent journalists and critics of the government are enough to debunk its new assertion that BNP has launched a so-called India Out movement in Bangladesh”.
It may be mentioned here that, following publication of reports in Blitz exposing the notorious background of Qadaruddin Shishir, his gang members sent threat mail to me which contained extremely derogatory language.
This is the exact mission of this writeup. To salvage BNP from its track record of being a Tier-III terrorist organization, an ultra-Islamist force and finally, a party connected to Al Qaeda.
Before concluding, we would like to remind – it is Daily Star editor Mahfuz Anam – not Blitz editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury who is a self-admitted boss of disinformation. Blitz does not run disinformation. Even our findings about Qadaruddin Shishir being a Jamaat-e-Islami activists is based on strong evidence.
For the information of Mahfuz Anam and Qadaruddin, Blitz has been a news leader on most of the occasions. Here is just one example. Can Daily Star show even just one example where its news caught the attention of the international media? No way!
Unfortunately what I am seeing is Blitz republishing Sputnik items, while there is nothing about Bangladesh in Sputnik. Does this Russian news agency ignore Bangladesh?
Blitz is a powerful newspaper.