When the internet went blank, came my finest hours

On the morning of July 19, 2024, I walked into the AFP Dhaka bureau at around 8:30 AM, bracing for the worst. The night before, the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina had severed the nation's internet. 

Dreading the reality of having to dictate breaking news stories over crackling phone lines, I sat down at my desk and stared at my monitor. To my bewilderment, the broadband icon was active. The internet was working.

I later learned we were pulling a connection through a rare, overlooked VSAT line. I quickly checked my mobile phone—dead network. I called friends across the city; they confirmed the rest of the country was blacked out. 

The realization hit me: against all odds, our bureau had connectivity. We were the only window left open to the outside world.

We immediately began filing. The day before, July 18, Hasina had unleashed security forces and ruling-party thugs onto hundreds of thousands of protesters. The capital had transformed into a battleground for the country's future. 

A police spokesman admitted up to 200,000 protesters had flooded the streets, ignited by footage of the student Abu Sayed being shot dead and female Dhaka University students being beaten.

We had spent the previous 24 hours counting corpses and tracking casualties. At the Uttara Crescent Hospital—owned by close friends of mine—at least 1,000 students were treated in a single day, many blinded by police birdshot. As night descended, the government imposed the communications blackout. 

My AFP colleagues, photographer Monir Uz Zaman and video journalist Mohammad Ali Mazed, had captured visuals from across Dhaka, but we had been unable to transmit them to our Asia headquarters. Even the five-star Sonargaon Pan Pacific hotel, where we had booked emergency rooms hoping for backup networks, was in darkness.

But now, on the morning of July 19, we had a lifeline. We began moving the backlog of photos and videos documenting the massacres in Uttara, Rampura, and Shanir Akhra.

By 11:00 AM, the international press corps realized that AFP Dhaka was the only outlet in Bangladesh capable of reaching the outside world. An hour later, Mehdi Lebouachera, the AFP Asia Chief, received an urgent request from the Reuters Asia chief: their Dhaka correspondents needed to use our office to file.

Mehdi, New Delhi-based AFP News Editor Peter Martell, and I jumped onto a video call. We all understood the gravity of the situation. Allowing a flood of journalists into our bureau would tip off the authorities, creating a security risk. 

I had never been a friend of the Awami League regime, and there were plenty of pro-government journalists who wouldn't hesitate to report me for what the state would inevitably brand as "seditious" activity.

Ultimately, Mehdi and Peter left the decision to me. After all, if the state security apparatus raided the office, it was my head on the chopping block.

I gathered my team: Qadaruddin Shishir (then AFP’s fact-check editor), Monir Uz Zaman, Mohammad Ali Mazed, and Md Eyamin (AFP fact-check reporter). I told them my intention: we had to open our doors. 

The regime had plunged the country into darkness to butcher its citizens in secret, away from the eyes of the international community. We could not let them succeed. My colleagues agreed. We would share our infrastructure with anyone who needed it.

Reuters arrived first. Then came the deluge.

Soon, our 1,100-square-foot office was buzzing with 50 to 60 journalists at any given time. Reporters from the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Financial Times, Al Jazeera, the Spanish news agency EFE, EPA, Netra News, and freelancers filing for European, Asian, and American outlets packed into the room. 

Freelance photojournalists and video editors hunkered down to transmit massive files across the globe.

Simultaneously, around 25 local newspapers that double as AFP clients swarmed the bureau to access foreign news wires. Leading national dailies like Prothom Alo, The Daily Star, Samakal, and Jugantor compiled their international pages from our screens. 

Activists and cultural figures like Shahidul Alam walked through our doors, sending out urgent global dispatches within minutes. We had only five computers, so we strictly rationed them: ten minutes per user. My team never whispered a complaint, working tirelessly to assist the revolving door of correspondents.

By the third day of the blackout, the danger intensified. Two journalists—one from Al Jazeera, the other from the Guardian—pulled me aside. They warned me that someone had tipped off the Information and Broadcasting Minister, Mohammad Ali Arafat. 

I was in the regime’s crosshairs. Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud soon launched a veiled public attack on AFP’s coverage of the crackdowns.

The anger of the ministers was fueled by what we were letting out. Local journalists who couldn't publish through their own censored outlets brought us footage, including videos of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) officers opening fire on unarmed crowds and the military deploying UN-marked armored personnel carriers against civilians. 

Our coverage of these violations triggered an immediate reaction from the United Nations. (I later learned from journalist Sayeed Khan, who was detained by intelligence officers shortly before Hasina's downfall, that his interrogators repeatedly grilled him about his ties to me and whether I had helped him leak stories to Mirror Asia).

For years, we had nurtured the AFP Dhaka bureau as a sanctuary for young minds pushing for change. Student leaders and revolutionaries like Akhter Hossain, Akram Hossain, Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud, Baker, Bin Yamin Molla, and Tareq had all frequented our office. Keeping our doors open to all walks of life kept our journalism attuned to the heartbeat of the streets.

Even so, the looming threat of state retribution was daunting. I had been summoned by the Hasina government twice before over our coverage of the war crimes trials, and it hadn't rattled me. 

I had interviewed Khaleda Zia in February 2015 while she was under house arrest, blending into the entourage of the British High Commissioner Robert Gibson to gain access. I had interviewed Tarique Rahman in December 2023 when doing so was treated as a criminal offense. I had never worried about my own safety.

But this was different. Now, I feared for my team. I contacted the UN Resident Coordinator in Dhaka, Gwyn Lewis, who assured me they would stand by us. Recognizing that the French Ambassador was overly cozy with Awami League officials, I bypassed her and briefed other key Western envoys about our situation.

About a week later, the government restored the nationwide internet.

A sigh of relief swept through the bureau, followed by a strange emptiness. For days, our tiny space had been a pressure cooker of history. We had eaten our lunches standing up, devoured hundreds of singaras, and helped facilitate some of the most courageous journalism produced out of Bangladesh. 

At any given hour, fifty people had crowded the room, waiting for their ten minutes at a keyboard.

Suddenly, we were just the old AFP bureau again: five people hunched over their respective screens, working in silence. But we walked with our heads held high. We knew what we had done in the darkness, and we knew how much it had mattered for the soul of our country.

The true celebration, however, came a short while later—when AFP, and yours truly, broke the final story to the world: Hasina, the mass murderer, had fled the country.

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The writer is the Editor-in-Chief of Daily Waada and formerly the AFP Dhaka Bureau Chief.