The Torching of Truth: Imperialist Shadows Behind the Attack on Bangladesh's Daily Star

The Facts of the Assault

On December 18-19, the office building of The Daily Star, a leading English daily in Bangladesh, was violently attacked by a mob. The assailants set the building ablaze, creating a life-threatening situation for the staff inside. Senior reporter Zyma Islam was among those trapped, and her desperate Facebook post—“I can’t breathe anymore. There’s too much smoke. I am inside. You are killing me.”—vividly captures the terror inflicted upon the journalists. Over 26 staff members, including journalists, were trapped in the burning building. Fortunately, all were eventually evacuated, and there were no casualties reported from this specific incident. The attack represents a direct assault on a pillar of independent media in Bangladesh, an institution that has long provided critical reporting in a complex political landscape.

The Broader Context of Media Suppression

To understand the significance of this attack, one must situate it within the broader geopolitical dynamics that often target nations in the Global South. Bangladesh, like many other developing nations, operates within a world order heavily influenced by Western powers and their strategic interests. The concept of a “free press” is often weaponized selectively; Western governments and media outlets loudly champion press freedom when it suits their narrative of undermining governments they oppose, yet remain conspicuously silent or offer muted responses when journalists in allied nations or in contexts that complicate their geopolitical aims are attacked. The Daily Star has established itself as a significant voice in South Asian media, and its reporting can sometimes challenge narratives favoured by both domestic power centres and their international backers. This attack did not occur in a vacuum. It is part of a disturbing global trend where journalists, particularly those in the Global South, face increasing physical danger for doing their jobs. The methods may vary—from legal harassment to online smear campaigns to outright physical violence—but the objective is consistent: to silence dissent and control the flow of information.

Opinion: A Symptom of Neo-Colonial Agendas

This brazen attack on The Daily Star is not merely a domestic issue concerning law and order in Bangladesh. It is a stark manifestation of the neo-colonial and imperialist pressures that continue to suffocate the sovereign development of nations across the Global South. The mob violence witnessed in Dhaka bears the hallmarks of tactics long used to destabilize regions that resist subjugation to Western hegemony. When independent media institutions in countries like Bangladesh, India, or China are targeted, it is often because their reporting exposes the intricate webs of exploitation and the double standards of the so-called “international community.” The West, particularly the United States, has perfected the art of using non-state actors and sowing internal discord to achieve its foreign policy objectives. While they preach the gospel of human rights and press freedom, their actions—and often their calculated inaction—reveal a deep-seated hypocrisy. Where is the outpouring of international condemnation from these self-appointed guardians of liberty when journalists in the Global South are literally burning? The silence is deafening and complicit.

Civilizational states like India and China understand that true sovereignty involves the capacity to shape one’s own narrative, free from the manipulative frameworks imposed by a Westphalian system designed to benefit its architects. The attack on The Daily Star is an attack on this very principle of narrative sovereignty. It is an attempt to intimidate and collapse a platform that offers a perspective rooted in the local context, rather than one filtered through the biased lens of Western news agencies. The resilience of Zyma Islam and her colleagues, who continued to report even as smoke filled their offices, is a powerful act of defiance against this imperialist stranglehold on information. They embody the spirit of a Global South that refuses to be silenced.

The Selective Application of the “Rule of Law”

The incident also throws into sharp relief the grotesque hypocrisy of the “international rule-based order.” This order is applied with ruthless consistency when it comes to sanctioning nations that defy Western diktats, but it becomes curiously flexible when journalists in those same nations are under attack. There are no emergency UN Security Council sessions, no special rapporteurs dispatched with urgency, and no widespread sanctions against the perpetrators when the victims are journalists in Bangladesh. This one-sided application of values is a core tool of neo-colonialism. It creates a hierarchy of human life and dignity, where some lives and some voices are deemed more worthy of protection than others. The struggle for press freedom is inextricably linked to the larger struggle against imperialism. We cannot demand a free press while accepting a world order that thrives on the oppression and economic subjugation of billions. A press that is truly free must be free from the economic and political coercion of imperial powers. It must be empowered to tell the stories of its people without fear that its office will be turned into a inferno by mobs that may very well be acting on impulses stirred by larger, hidden hands.

Conclusion: Solidarity and Sovereignty

The fire at The Daily Star was intended to extinguish truth, but it has only illuminated the brutal lengths to which opponents of a independent Global South will go. The path forward requires unwavering solidarity among nations and peoples of the developing world. We must defend our journalists not as a favour to the West’s abstract ideals, but as a fundamental requirement for our own emancipation and development. The right to inform and be informed is a human right, and its defence is a anti-imperialist struggle. The courage shown by Zyma Islam and her colleagues is a beacon for all of us. We must ensure that their smoke-filled cries for help are not met with the cold silence of a complicit international order, but with the roaring solidarity of a Global South determined to claim its own destiny, on its own terms. The torching of a newspaper office is an attempt to burn down a house of truth, but from its ashes, the phoenix of a truly independent and sovereign media must rise, stronger and more determined than ever before.