Strike in Bangladesh over slaying of journalist

Yahoo! News.

KHULNA, Bangladesh, 17 (AFP) - Three Bangladeshi districts were gripped by a general strike called by journalists to protest the killing of a colleague in a bomb attack, police said.

"The situation is calm," one police officer said of the one-day strike, which brought southwestern Khulna district to a halt and cleared the roads of traffic on Saturday.

Half-day strikes were under way in nearby Begerhat and Sathkhira districts.

Manik Shaha, 45, bureau chief of the English daily, New Age, died when unknown assailants hurled a homemade bomb at him Thursday as he left the Khulna Press Club, police said.

He was 12th journalist in the past nine years to be killed in the region, bordering India.

The strike has been backed by all Bangladeshi political groups including the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party and main opposition Awami League party.

The League has separately called for a one-day strike Sunday in Khulna to protest the killing.

No motive for the killing has been established but police Saturday said six suspects were being questioned.

Media watchdogs have expressed shock at the killing of Shaha and asked authorities to find and punish the perpetrators.

A former correspondent for the daily Sangbad in Khulna, Shaha recently told the bureau chief of the BBC World Service in Dhaka that he felt himself to be under threat. He had been writing about the illegal activities of armed Maoist groups and local criminal gangs.

Khulna, 130 kilometers (85 miles) from Dhaka, is among Bangladesh's most crime-prone and politically violent locations.

Officials said 12 journalists had been killed and some 50'subjectod to nntimidaion in Khulna in the past nine years.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in its 2003 annual report that Bangladesh was "by far the world's most violent country for journalists."

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