Describing the dozens of lawsuits filed against The Daily Star Editor and Publisher Mahfuz Anam as civil litigations, Prime Minister's ICT Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said that it has nothing to do with the media as a whole.
“This is not an attack on the media. It is also not even criminal litigation. It is civil litigation… If you cause someone harm, the aggrieved party has every right to sue you for damages,” Joy wrote in his Facebook page yesterday.
Mentioning about the criticisms over the cases, he said: “Our government has not filed a single case against him. The cases are all civil in nature, claiming damages and monetary compensation.
“So I would like to ask, is the media immune from any liability whatsoever?”
The son of the premier said that politicians have to abide by the law or go to jail, the police have to abide by the law or go to jail, “but there is no law against writing false stories.”
“The only recourse that politicians and famous personalities have is civil law by claiming damages. If nothing else, at least the pain of legal fees and time in court should make a journalist think twice before publishing something false and destroying a person’s good name,” he said in his post.
At least 70 cases on defamation and sedition charges have been filed against Mahfuz Anam with different courts since early this month for publishing “confusing” and “defamatory” newspaper reports on Awami League President Sheikh Hasina.
The plaintiffs claim that these news stories led to her arrest during the military-backed caretaker tenure.
On a TV talk show on February 3, Mahfuz Anam admitted that he had made a "big mistake" by running corruption stories involving Hasina based on information provided by the DGFI.
Supporters of the Awami League and its affiliate bodies started filing the cases with different courts across the country after Joy had demanded the arrest of Mahfuz Anam and closure of the English-language newspaper.
