In his distinguished career, he also achieved a diploma in education from the Philippines in 1969, when almost all Bengalis in the former East Pakistan was erupted in the demand of democracy from the military regime of West Pakistan. He then retired in 1974 and started working as teacher in the local school. As a teacher, he was well known and well respected. He then passed out in 2002 at the age of 89.
Fazlul Bari has seven brothers and two sisters including me. All of them are highly educated and well established in their professional and social lives. He has a bachelor degree in Arts. He passed my HSC in 1981. Then took a diploma in Civil Engineering in 1986 from Feni Polytechnic Institute, Bangladesh. From 1986 to 1987 he traveled the entire Bangladesh by walking. In 1987, he started working as a reporter in former weekly Bichinta. It was a weekly magazine and was banned in 1988 by the former military regime of General Ershad. He then had his Bachelor of Arts in 1988. Bari then worked in several weekly and daily newspapers and magazines. There is no one in Bangladesh who traveled the entire country and then became a journalist.
He studied at UTS with a scholarship from UTS Equity and Diversity Unit. Fazlul Bari has been attracted to the life and culture op peoples all of his life. Once upon a time, he used to think that one day he would be a traveler and explorer like Ibn Battuta. Bari used to read the life of famous travelers, but he never met one. His father sent him to Polytechnic so that he could enter a professional life soon. However, he did not like it. His academic institution Feni Polytechnic Institute used to get closed during those unexpected Vacations.
After his diploma from Polytechnic in 1986, he was asked by my parents to search for employment. However, he did not want become a civil engineering professional. So he ran away from home. I started walking.
Bari walked 64 districts and 321 sub districts of Bangladesh. He walked about 5500 kilometers. During his walk, he thought that he would have to do something so that people can remember his work. He decided to collect the local stories of the war of 1971 from each place he would visit. He started to interview people on way who took part in the war or suffered in the genocide in the hand of Pakistanis.
The experience later influenced his professional life and still does. He is the only person in Bangladesh who have seen almost all mass graves of the victims of that genocide, and witnessed almost every battle field.
He is the only person who can tell and identify the crimes of Pakistan and Jamaat E Islami in 1971 in every part of Bangladesh. He discovered many historic stories of the people who fought in the days of 1971 that were unknown to the world. He also discovered many crimes of the genocide committed by Pakistanis and its perpetrators that were never been told. He unveiled many war criminals who later became socially and politically reinstated.
One of the most prominent war criminals he unveiled was Mr. Maulana Delawar Hossain Sayedee, a prominent Islamic cleric and Jamaat E Islami leader in Bangladesh. Mr. Sayedee is also a former member of parliament and the member of the central executive committee of Jamaat.
Bari is the first person who reported that Mr. Sayedee looted the Hindus during 1971. He helped the Pakistani Army to capture and kill many Hindus Pirojpur district of Bangladesh. He was a member of Rajakar, a paramilitary force created by then Pakistani government in 1971 to assist in capturing and killing Bengalis and 1971. Bari’s report contained important specific information with evidence of Mr. Sayedee’s crimes. Since then, Mr. Sayedee has been a labeled as a war criminal in Bangladesh and the victims started demanding his prosecution under domestic and customary international laws.
After the tragedy of 11 September 2001, US government prepared a list of no fly passengers list in which Mr. Sayedee’s name was included. Bari received a copy of the letter from the US government to the Bangladesh Government asking that Mr. Sayedee not to be allowed to board and flight going to the US. He made a report on this information in my newspaper and became a subject of anger of Jamaat E Islami.
In 2006, Mr. Sayedee went to the UK last time. Few days before his travel to the UK, he gave a speech in a meeting in Coxs Bazar accusing USA, Britain and Australia for waging war against Islam in Iraq and asked for reventage. Bari supplied a copy of the video tape of that public meeting was sent to the TV channels in the UK. Channel four made a report on Mr. Sayeddee and questioned the UK government why he was allowed entrée in the UK. Later another blow came on Mr. Sayedee when secret documents of the UK government were smuggled to the media that the UK home office didn’t want Mr. Sayedee to be in Britain but the Foreign office ignored their warning. Bari wrote a report on this information in his newspaper. Mr. Saydee later had to flee from the UK silently without attending any of his religious and organizational meetings.
Bari’s work on 1971 during his walk in the whole of Bangladesh also later inspired the movement of demanding the prosecution of the war criminals of 1971. In 1992 an organization was formed in the leadership of Jahanara Imam called, Ghatak-Dalal Nirmul Committee. This aim and objective of that organization was to prosecute the war criminals of 1971. This organization created a mass movement in Bangladesh that politically defeated Jamaat and its ideology and made public aware of it’s crimes against humanity. Bari was one of the founder members of this organization.
Since childhood, Bari used to write letters to the editors in different national and local newspapers in Bangladesh. He used to feel a wonderful pleasure whenever he used to see his writing was in the print media. Writing has been in his blood since my childhood. This contributed to a full scale career as a journalist in his adulthood.
Through his more than 20 years of career, he have become one of the most prominent and well-known journalist of Bangladesh. He have been writing on minority persecution, against the corruption and misconducts of the governments in different times, against the Islamic fundamentalists. He have always been the target of the Islamic terrorists and government agencies. However, he used to ignore those threats knowing the risks and continued his work as a journalist.
Fazlul Bari joined the daily Bangla Bazar Potrica in 1992 as a staff reporter. He have always been writing against Islamic fundamentalists in his entire career and one of his report was awared “Noor Jahan Memorial” in 1992. This report was on a girl Noor Jahan herself.
Noor Jahan was a minor female child in a remote hilly village called “Chatakchara” in Bangladesh. She was forced to marry someone by her family in a very young age. That husband of Noor Jahan left her within few days of marriage. After waiting for three years for the husband, her father took a verbal “talak” from the family of that husband and then got her married again. The local mullahs called it illegitimate marriage and wanted to punish her by stoning to death according to Islamic shariah law. Noor Jahan them committed suicide to avoid persecution in the hand of fundamentalists.
Fazlul Bari made a report on Noor Jahan in the Bangla Bazar potrica newspaper. This created a huge reaction among the human rights activists and the government was forced to bring the perpetrators to trial.
In his entire career he wrote seven books in total. One of them is “Nomoskar Bangladesh”, which means in English “bow to you Bangladesh”. The book was written on the silent deportation of Hindus from Bangladesh. All of the stories in that book were based on true incidents, except the name of the characters.
The theme of the stories was that the Hindus are being forced to leave Bangladesh on the face of tortures, some of them come near the boarder of Bangladesh, look at the country from other side, bow and shed tears.
Another significant book of mine is “Phaharer Putra Konna”, which means in English, “sons and daughters of the aboriginals in Bangladesh”.
Fazlul Bari went to Pakistan in 1993 as a staff reporter of former daily “Lal Sabuj” to cover the election of Pakistan. He went to Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. In 1995 BariI joined a chief reporter of Dhaka Bureau of a Chittagong regional newspaper named “Purbo kone”. He went to New Delhi in the same year to cover the SAARC summit for that newspaper. He interviewed the famous bandit queen Ms. Fuloon Devi.
On 14 May 1996, Bari joined the daily Janakantha as a senior staff reporter. In the same year he was sent to Agartala, India to report on the role of the city during the war of 1971 in Bangladesh. Agartala is the capital city the Indian state, Tripura. Bari spent one month in Agartala. The city was the Military Head Quarter of the exiled government of Bangladesh in 1971. Most of the important decisions of the early days of the war were taken by the exiled Bangladesh Government from that city. Most of the famous Bengali military leaders in that war took shelter in Agartala and took preparation for the war of independence. In 1971, the state of Tripura had a population of 1.4 million. When the war broke out, additional 1.6 million refugees took shelter from Bangladesh. The city was only five kilometers away from the Akhawura sub district boarder of Bangladesh. When Pakistani soldiers used to fire shells from the Pakistani side of the boarder, it used to the heart of the city and civilians including Bengali refugees used to die. Bari later wrote a book with the name “Agartala of 71”.
In 1997, Bari was sent to Egypt and Jordan to report on political turmoil of Palestine. His assignment was to enter Palestine. The ambassador of Palestine in Dhaka that time, Mr. Shahta Zarab wrote referral letters to the Palestine missions in Cairo and Amman so that Ihe could enter the occupied territory. However, since Bangladesh did not have diplomatic relationship with Israel and it was prohibited by law to travel in the state of Israel, and the visa granting authority in the Palestine was Israel, the Palestine authority could not help.
Bari went to Israel embassy in cairo to try to enter Israel by himself. However, when the Bangladeshi embassy in Cairo learned about his visit to the Israel embassy, Bangladeshi Ambassador yelled at him and told me that he would be send a note on me in Dhaka and that would make him suffer in future.
After September 11, 2001, Bari was asked to go to the Afghanistan to cover the war between the allied forces and Taliban and Al-quida forces. The most convenient way to go to Afghanistan was through Peswar of Pakistan and most of the journalists of the world were using that route. However, the embassy of Pakistan refused to issue him a visa. The media officer of the Pakistani High Commission in Dhaka informed that “the daily Janakantha” is the only Bangladeshi newspaper, that is blacklisted in Pakistan and that is why his visa application was refused. This reason for being blacklisted in Pakistan was that the daily Janakantha always criticize Pakistan for its crime against humanity and genocide in 1971 and for asks for the prosecution of the war criminals.
The religious fundamentalist political parties in Bangladesh also have influence on Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka. They asked the Pakistan High Commission not to grant him a visa and that’s why he could not go to the Afghan war.
In 2002, Bari was assigned to cover the second gulf war and went to Iraq. When he entered Iraq, there was no one in Iraq to give me a visa. Several thousand journalists from different parts of the world gathered in the Jordan-Iraq border at that time. Bari went inside Iraq with other journalists using an accreditation card provided the Jordan government. Bari witnessed the declaration of the fall of Saddam’s regime on the day of his arrival in Baghdad. He rented a bed in a guest house next to the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.
Fazlul Bari witnessed the massacre in Baghdad as well as the cheering of the people celebrating Saddam’s fall. He visited Saddam and his cabinet members’ palaces. He also traveled the major cities in Iraq like Basra, Nasiria, Mausul, Samara, Kurdistan, Tikrit etc. He reported all those experiences in my everyday reports which got huge popularity. In 2004, Bari went to India again to cover the election of the largest democracy of the world. I traveled the country for two months.
In 2006, Bari went to Lebanon to cover the war between Israel and Hezbollah. He spent one month in Lebanon in the middle of the war and reported everyday. Science the International Air Port in Beirut was destroyed by the Israelis, he had to travel by road through Syria. One of his interesting experiences is that the city of Beirut is divided in different parts based on the inhabitants’ religious beliefs. Since Hezbollah members are Shia’s, the areas occupied by the shia’s were the prime targets of the Israelis. Every building in the city was built in a way as if the entire nation was ready for a war. Every building had a bunker underground and people sued to take shelter in those bunkers at the event of an air raid. TV channels used to live broadcast the movements of the Israeli attacking air crafts through satellite and people used to watch those movements from their underground bankers.
Another interesting experience was that wherever a building was destroyed by Israelis and the building turned into rubbles, surprisingly Hezbollah still used to fire missiles towards Israel from under the rubbles. It became clear later that every building had underground bunkers and were not destroyed by the air attack and could still be used to fire missiles towards Israel.
Fazlul Bari also witnessed with surprise that within three days of ceasefire Hezbollah could figure out that fifteen thousand buildings were destroyed in the war and they made a donation of fifteen thousand US dollars to the owner of each buildings. Within ten days of ceasefire, the Lebanese Prime Minister went to visit the war torn areas. However, by the time Hezbollah already cleared the rubbles and started construction work of the demolished buildings.
Fazlul Bari came to Australia in 2007. He reported about Jamaat’s activities in Australia and that their links with Jamia Islamia of Indonesia. He reported that Jamaat is under ASIO watch and that is also involved with underground terrorism in this country.
Bari interviewed the current president of The Australia / Israel & Jewish Affairs council (AIJAC) and former president of Executive Council of Australian Jewry Inc Mr. Jeremy Jones, survivors of WW2 Holocaust and linked it with the crimes of Jamaat during 1971. He also interviewed a Executive Member and Committee Chair of NSW Jews Board of Deputies Mr. David Bitel.
Since his arrival to Australia, he have been reporting on events happening in Australia to Bangladesh broadcast and print media. He reported heavily on the US president George W Bush’s last visit to Australia, the protest of Stop Bush Coalition, the last federal election of Australia, the historic apology of the Prime Minister of Australia the Hon Kevin Rudd, MP to the Australian stolen generation.
Bari have also been interviewing some prominent Australian politicians, their interest in Bangladesh and current world affairs etc. he have met recently the president of Christian Democratic Party president Fred Neil. He am also in the process of writing on the role of Australian military deployed in the Afghanistan and Iraq and their encounters with the Taliban and Al-Quida forces.
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