Issue of memorandum and protest rally against secret meeting with broker publishers
September 18, 20242 Mins Read
Jumbangla Desk: The co-publishers of the last 17 years of dictatorship were still trying to collude secretly with the current government. We are very happy to have a highly educated, learned professor and writer like you as an advisor in the interim government of independent Bangladesh, which was achieved by the blood of hundreds of martyrs.

We hoped you would sit down with ordinary publishers and hear from their mouths about 16 years of oppressive deprivation. Learn how dodgy-broker publishers have looted monopolies and profits by supplying them with partisan political books.

Bureaucrats will be judged on how they looted the government treasury by publishing Bastapcha books. But today our hope has turned into despair, joy into terror.

The publishers made these comments during a human chain and protest meeting on behalf of creative publishers of all levels against the dictatorship in a protest rally in front of the National Press Club on Wednesday (September 18) against the meeting of the Cultural Affairs Adviser with syndicate publishers identified as looters in the publishing world.

At the end of the human chain and the protest meeting, he gave the memorandum to the advisors and the concerned people.

Speakers in the meeting said, not even 40 days have passed since you took charge, you have started rehabilitating the corrupt and rogue publishers before the blood stains of the martyrs have dried. The publisher was not out of all walks of life including students, teachers and social activists. You've sat in meetings with publishers like this in the first place.

We urge you to immediately sit down with anti-authoritarian publishers and listen to them. We want to cooperate from the publisher's place in the reformation and construction of the new state.

Also, I want to say in an unequivocal voice, if in the future you sit with the brokers of anti-people dictatorship with the corrupt publishers, then we will be forced to go for strict agitation including book fair boycott. Because, the publishing society will not mess with the blood of martyrs.

It is to be noted that on September 17 at 5 pm in the presence of Bangla Academy Director General Mohammad Azam, the Cultural Advisor met in a secret meeting with 5 publishers/publisher representatives from 3 publishing houses accused of corruption and abuse of power in a secret meeting about Amar Ekushey Book Fair.

On behalf of the creative publishers, Saeed Bari, Mizanur Rahman Sardar, Delwar Hasan, Mahabub Rahman, Helal Uddin, Abul Bashar Feroze, Sharif Shahji, Mohiuddin Koli, Mamun Sarwar, Mamunur Rashid, Jahangir Alam, Abu Bakar Siddique, Saifullah etc. spoke in the protest rally.