UNESCO chief calls for investigation into murder of Bangladeshi journalist

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with defending press freedom today denounced the murder of a Bangladeshi journalist, Jamal Uddin, last month.

“I condemn the murder of Jamal Uddin,” the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova, said in a news release. “It is essential that the authorities investigate this outrageous attack on freedom of expression and on press freedom, which is its corollary.”

Mr. Uddin, a reporter for the Bengali-language newspaper Gramer Kagoi, was stabbed and hacked to death by a group of men in a market in Sharsha, in the south-western Bangladeshi district of Jessore on 15 June, UNESCO said, adding that he was the third journalist to have been killed in Bangladesh this year.

According to Reporters without Borders, Mr. Uddin had been the target of death threats in connection with his reporting on the local drug trade.