Netra News is a Sweden-based investigative and public interest journalism website primarily focusing on Bangladesh. The website was launched on December 26, 2019, by Tasneem Khalil, an exiled Bangladeshi journalist currently living in Sweden. It was blocked by authorities in Bangladesh within 72 hours of its inception, with Khalil himself alleging and reports suggesting that Bangladesh's military intelligence agency, DGFI, was behind the move.
History
Netra News is run by a grant provided by National Endowment for Democracy, a non-governmental and non-profit organization funded by the U.S. government. It is a project under Bangladesh Media Network, which is overseen by an organisational board comprising Kerstin Brunnberg, a prominent Swedish journalist, Australian academic Bina D’Costa, and Dan Morrison, an American journalist. It is published in both English and Bangla. Khalil acts as its editor-in-chief, while David Bergman, who has extensively worked in Bangladesh, is the editor of its English version. The website, in its opening editorial, stated that it decided not to name any other journalists associated with it, citing "security concerns."
Website Block
As one of its first reports, the website ran a story alleging that Obaidul Quader, the general secretary of the ruling Awami League party and a cabinet minister, has a collection of luxury watches from brands including Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and Ulysse Nardin, the price of which is not consistent with his publicly disclosed income. The website was blocked days after the story had been published. In the wake of the block, the website launched a mirror version based in Google CloudFirebase Storage, which was also blocked by authorities only to be forced to lift the ban following complaints from app developers who relied on the Google service. However, the mirror site was blocked again following the publication of a report based on a leaked United Nations memo forecasting up to 2 million deaths in Bangladesh in the COVID-19 crisis in a "no-intervention" scenario. The website of Benar News, a Malaysia-based news agency, was also blocked in Bangladesh following its publication of the story quoting Netra News.
Impact
The Obaidul Quader triggered a response from Transparency International Bangladesh, a civil society organization. The minister claimed that he received the watches as gifts. In January 2020, Netra News published accusing Tabith Awal, a candidate of the oppositionBangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka mayoral elections, of failing to "disclose ownership of a foreign company in his affidavit to the Election Commission of Bangladesh." Following the publication of the report, AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik, a former justice of Supreme Court of Bangladesh, filed a petition to the high court challenging Awal's candidacy. However, the high court rejected the petition and allowed Awal to contest in the election. On March 21, 2020, Netra News a leaked preliminary research report prepared by a group of Bangladeshi and U.S.-based researchers led by Malay Kanti Mridha of BRAC University predicting that Bangladesh faced up to 0.5 million deaths in the COVID-19 crisis without government interventions. The story led the university to launch an internal investigation against Mridha, resulting in condemnation by academic freedom activists. The website also accused the university of " to restrict access" to the report by forcing document hosting website Scribd to remove it from the latter's website despite claiming that it did not conduct or authorize the report. On March 28, 2020, the website leaked a United Nations interagency memo, which up to 2 million deaths in Bangladesh from Covid-19 in a "no-intervention" scenario. Bangladesh's foreign minister, AK Abdul Momen, alleged that the fact that the UN prepared such a memo was "a total violation of the UN charter."
