CNN silences a report exposing Islamist’s White House Scam

An iReport article that exposed an email scam regarding a petition submitted to the White House is recently taken down by CNN. The White House petition is organized by Jamaat-Islami-Bangladesh (JIB), demanding support from the Obama administration to stop the war crimes tribunals currently held in Bangladesh. The article provided proof (using screenshots from different JIB web sites and facebook pages) that JIB supporters were training their recruits on how to create multiple fake email IDs to increase the number of signatures in the petition. The article also raised some questions about the anomalies in the existing signatures in the petition based on some population data.

During the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971, JIB openly supported the Pakistani Military and JIB supporters actively took part in the genocide that resulted in 3 million deaths and over 200,000 rape victims. Unfortunately, the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity were never brought to justice. Pakistan never held any war crimes tribunal to prosecute the soldiers involved in such heinous acts and all early attempts (between 1972-1975) to bring the JIB collaborators to justice failed due to the political impunity that followed the assassination of the first president of Bangladesh, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, in a military coup in 1975. In the following decades, the perpetrators of those atrocities enjoyed full impunity and kept strengthening their Islamist agenda in Bangladesh. Four decades after those crimes were committed, due to the overwhelming national mandate, the current government of Bangladesh finally resurrected the process for justice, established the International Crimes Tribunals (ICT) and started prosecuting some of the current and former top brass of JIB.

Following the first set of verdicts from the ICT, JIB and its student wing Jamaat-Shibir (JI) unleashed nationwide terrorism by destroying public and private establishments, uprooting train lines, destroying bridges and power stations, attacking and killings the law enforcement officials, and by ravaging the religious minorities throughout the country. On several occasions security forces opened fire to stop these violence and the death toll was staggering. National and international human rights groups had called upon JIB to stop this violence.

In the midst of all these terrorism and political turmoil, a petition in the official web site for the White House was organized by the JIB supporters to demand Obama administration to exert political pressure on Bangladesh Government to stop the war crimes tribunals. At the same time, JIB supporters started a campaign in various facebook groups to support this petition. These groups published articles training the novice computer users on how to create multiple fake email addresses and then use these addresses to sign the petition. Once exposed, these training articles were later taken down by those groups, however, some screenshots of these articles were already captured by some activists supporting the war crimes tribunals. Using these screen shots, Mr. Mamur Hossain published an iReport article exposing this email scam that illegally influences the White House petition. But ever since that article was published in CNN, JIB supporters started reporting that article to CNN as inappropriate.

As of today, March 9th, 2013, CNN has removed the iReport article without explaining any reasons to its author, Mr. Hossain. He thinks that it is possible that CNN’s decision to take down the article was based on the number of complaints they were receiving from the JIB supporters, but CNN failed to consider that even those complaints may be coming from iReport accounts created by using fake email addresses following steps described in the training instructions provided by the JIB support groups. Activists supporting the war crimes tribunal throughout the world have expressed dissatisfaction for CNN’s action. Many of these activists expressed concerns that CNN is being unduly influenced by the Islamists and removing the article may be silencing the whistle blowers who are exposing illegal and elicit activities. They demanded that the article is reinstated in iReports, a proper investigation is launched to uncover this email scam and the petition is removed from the White House web site due to the violation of petition policies as outlined in the web site.

References

White House Petition by JIB:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/express-concern-against-international-war-crime-tribunal-and-mob-justice-bangladesh/6gg04svt

Copy of Mr. Mamur Hassan’s article: ()
http://en.sachalayatan.com/enamulhoque1/48372

Links for JIB violence following the verdicts:
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=270917
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=271016
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=271241
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=271245
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=271247
http://www.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/cop-killed-in-gunfight-with-jamaat-in-khulna/

Links for human rights groups asking JIB to stop violence:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/bangladesh-wave-violent-attacks-against-hindu-minority-2013-03-06
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/03/01/bangladesh-end-violence-over-war-crimes-trials

Recent Updates
After writing this article, I have uploaded this into my iReport account and the site was displaying the article without any issues. However, a few minutes later, when a friend complained that the link that I sent him is not accessible, I checked my iReport account and discovered that my article is shown as “Not Available” (screenshot attached).

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