The PM's visit and the Japanese media

Monzurul Huq says not a single Japanese newspaper reported anything on Bangladeshi Prime Minister Zia's visit to Japan

The Daily Star
Thursday, July 21, 2005

By Monzurul Huq

Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia has now returned to her normal busy schedule in Dhaka after completing a four-day official visit to Japan. This was her first Japan visit in more than a decade and hence it carried significant importance for both countries. Begum Zia arrived at Tokyo's Haneda airport on board a special Biman flight in the late evening of July 11 and was received by the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Shugen Tanikawa. She was taken straight to Tokyo's Imperial Hotel where she stayed until her departure on July 15.

The most significant part of the visit being the official discussion with the Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on July 14, the PM spent the first two days in Japan without having much discussion with the officials of the host country. It was in the evening of July 13 that her visit really picked up momentum as she attended a reception hosted by the Japan-Bangladesh Parliamentary League. The League is a pressure group of Japanese Diet members who try to lobby for Bangladesh on various issues and is presently headed by Shin Sakurai, a veteran parliamentarian of the main ruling Liberal Democratic Party and a former cabinet minister.

In between her arrival and joining the reception of the Parliamentary League, the PM of course attended a few important programs like the laying down of foundation stone of a Shaheed Minar in a Tokyo park and addressing a group of expatriate Bangladeshis at the hotel. But both of these programs had more of a Bangladeshi colouring rather than reflecting bilateral character. The Shaheed Minar program was arranged between a ward office of the city of Tokyo and the Bangladesh side, and no high officials of either the Japanese government or the Metropolitan Government of Tokyo attended the function.

All these issues have by now been widely covered and reported in our media, more because a 19-member media delegation also accompanied the PM to Japan. Bangladeshi audience, both readers of newspapers and television viewers, are now well aware of the details of the visit. As for the media of the host country, a completely reverse situation characterised the visit and I'm sure members of the Bangladesh media team that accompanied the PM were also puzzled by this total silence of their Japanese colleagues.

Throughout the period of Begum Zia's stay in Japan, not a single Japanese newspaper reported anything about the visit except running the supplement that was paid for by the concerned parties and hence had no news value. As a result it turned out to be completely puzzling, as Bangladeshis in Japan tried to find out the Japanese position about the visit soon after browsing the web pages of Bangladeshi newspapers that covered the visit extensively, and failed to locate even a single column small news item.

Television in Japan too maintained the darkness with equal strictness. The only exception was Japan's public broadcasting network NHK, which interviewed Begum Zia during her stay in Tokyo. But for NHK television too the visit turned out to be a non-news as nothing was reported in its news programs.

If the silence of the Japanese media was part of a surprise, the circle was completed on July 14, the day our PM met her Japanese counterpart for official bilateral discussions. The expatriate Bangladeshis in Japan, who were searching desperately for any news in the pages of Japanese newspapers about the visit and about their country, at last came across a small news item that dealt with their country. But a quick glance was enough to find out that if there was any link of that particular news item with the visit of our PM, it had the link from a negative position. Since it was a brief report that almost all Japanese newspapers carried on the same day, let me quote in full the version that the English edition of Japan's influential daily Asahi Shimbun carried. It reads like this:

"Indigenous Jumma people from Bangladesh called Wednesday on Tokyo to suspend official development assistance (ODA) to their country until human rights there improve. Representatives from the 10-member Jumma People's Network (Japan) filed the request with the Foreign Ministry. They said their people had been forcibly evicted from their homes and massacred."

That's the only focus Bangladesh received in the Japanese media during the four days that our PM stayed in Tokyo. This obviously raises a few questions about the attitude of the Japanese media, as well as about our failure to convey the message properly to draw the media's attention more to the crucial issues of bilateral ties rather than to issues that can have overall negative impact on the visit. The hill people of Bangladesh obviously tried to manipulate the opportunity of the visit to convey their message in a meaningful way and there is no doubt they have cleverly outsmarted our officials in this regard. Saying so, I'm not denying that their rights are being violated and despite the signing of a peace treaty, they are facing serious problems that need to be addressed. But there still remains the unsolved question of why the action on part of the Japanese media turned out to be a concerted act, rather than an individual one where only one particular newspaper or broadcaster picked up the issue and highlighted it. Moreover, why it was published on the day when the crucial bilateral talks were supposed to be held.

It wouldn't be a gross misjudgment to say that the overall outcome of the visit could not please the host as Japan was eyeing over winning our support in joining the group of countries to co-sponsor a resolution on behalf of four countries including Japan that deals with the reform of the United Nations. For Japan the timing of the visit was of utmost importance as the time for submission of the resolution is quickly approaching. The Japanese side made it clear on several occasions that Tokyo would consider the UN reform proposal as one of the most important issues to be discussed at the highest level talks. And there was also faint hope among Japanese officials that winning the support of Bangladesh would not be that difficult as Japan always stood by the country and hardly made any request to Dhaka carrying that much importance. But as the visit of our PM was drawing nearer, Tokyo became increasingly concerned that their calculation might not eventually work out and this was probably the origin of the disappointment of the host country.

Does this hypothesis imply that the Japanese government has a strong influence over the country's media and the government can in times manipulate the contents of news item? Yes, this is precisely how the media work in Japan. Various Reporters' Clubs attached to each and every ministry, important offices, and political parties tend to develop a cozy relationship with the sources of news. This atmosphere of mutual understanding becomes helpful to both sides as the source can have a say over certain news items when there is a need and the media do not need to go through numerous channels to obtain information from the sources.

The nature of the report on hill people of Bangladesh suggests that it was most likely released through the Reporters' Club of the foreign ministry and this might prompt analysts to conclude that the host was not in a happy mood during the visit of our PM. We can also conclude that this mood of the host didn't fail to draw the attention of media representatives of concerned Reporters' Clubs and hence there was also a concerted action on their part to keep a complete silence. It should be noted that the media in Japan is in full support of the resolution drafted by the group of four countries and would like to see Japan joining the rank of important decision makers of the United Nations.

Date Posted: 7/21/2005