PM's political assistant Rashed Khan tears up copy of Daily Amar Desh on Facebook Live

Rashed Khan, political assistant to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, has torn up a copy of the newspaper Daily Amar Desh during a Facebook Live session. He tore up the newspaper after going live on Facebook on Saturday night (31 October).

In the video, Rashed Khan is seen tearing the copy of the newspaper while expressing anger. He alleged that two reports published by the newspaper had damaged his reputation. On the live broadcast he said it could not really be called a newspaper at all.

Rashed Khan said Amar Desh had run two lead stories about him. On 15 October, the newspaper's lead news was headlined 'What are the prime minister's advisers and assistants doing?' It covered more or less everyone, he said, but reading it he understood that the lead story had been produced with the aim of taking a dig at him with just two lines about him.

He quoted the writing on the newspaper's fifth page, which said that in recent times Rashed Khan had been vocal on television talk shows and social media in building narratives in favour of the government, and that some of his remarks had also created controversy among people of various classes and professions. Rashed Khan commented that the newspaper had to spend a lot of ink just to write that one line about him, and that the report had been published under that headline because a lead story could not be run on him alone.

He also objected to a report published in Amar Desh on Saturday (31 October) headlined 'Hasina's son Joy and some neo-BNP members have become one'. He said he had joined the BNP. No newspaper could in any way make such taunting comments about a person, he said, claiming that only Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman could make such remarks.

Raising Jamaat, he said he himself had brought forward the allegation that Jamaat's second-highest leader Mia Golam Parwar had met a high-ranking Indian intelligence official, and had thrown down a challenge. But Jamaat could not accept his challenge, he said, because if it did, he would share with everyone the even more important information in his possession.

He said he had stated at the time that if Mia Golam Parwar had not met the Indian intelligence official and if they had been defamed, they could file a case against him. He had also said that if Jamaat formed a party-level investigation committee and wanted to take information from him for a proper investigation, he would cooperate. Even without a committee, if the Jamaat ameer wanted to talk to him about the matter, he was ready to share information. He claimed Jamaat was not ready to accept any of his challenges because the meeting did take place—a hundred percent true, in his words. If Jamaat accepted the challenge and could prove he had lied, he said, he was ready to accept whatever punishment the people of this country gave him.

Rashed Khan said that, unable to accept his challenge and unable to give a proper reply to his remarks, the newspaper was assassinating his character by running lead news about him. He referred to the newspaper as 'Jamaat's Desh' and said he no longer wished to call it 'Amar Desh'.

He said an attempt was being made to tag him as Awami League by attaching his photograph with Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy. Yet he had served jail time in 2018 for making derogatory remarks about Sheikh Hasina. Leading the 2018 quota reform movement, he said, he had been tortured on 15 consecutive days of police remand and had been kept in police custody for three additional days.

On Mahmudur Rahman, he said he had respect for the oppressed journalist or editor, who himself had also been a victim of repression during the Awami League's time. For one oppressed man to tag another man in this way—a man who had himself been tortured on police remand—did not befit Mahmudur Rahman's Amar Desh, he said, expressing strong condemnation and protest over the matter.