Bangladeshi photographer assaulted, fired from job for “lip kissing” photo

A social media post from Wednesday also claimed that Ahmed had been fired from his job at the news portal ‘Purbapashchimbd’.

IMAGE: Jibon Ahmed/ Facebook

NEW DELHI: A photograph taken by Bangladeshi photojournalist Jibon Ahmed in front of Dhaka University’s Teachers and Students’ Centre landed him in trouble. The photojournalist who clicked the photograph with the sentiment of “letting love be free” had uploaded the image online on Monday. Ahmed posted the picture with the caption, “This is a poem of the blessed rains, let love be free.” While some invited the beauty of the photograph, the photograph soon invited severe backlash online where many said that the photograph was indecent and it would encourage harassment of women and rape culture.

This picture taken from TSC, DU today by Jibon Ahmed and this is real Bangladesh. Islami fundamentalism will be destroy from our country by such kind of love n practice....Love u Bangladesh... pic.twitter.com/15zUkfaeGR

— Nuruzzaman Labu (@labu8080) July 23, 2018

This even reportedly led to an assault on the photographer. It is reported that on Tuesday, he was assaulted by unidentified men for having “tainted the profession by capturing such photo”. Adding insult to injury, it is reported that Jibon Ahmed was also dismissed from his job. The news portal where Ahmed worked defended their decision by saying that he has been "absent from office from July 24," On social media sites many have some in defence of the photojournalist and even memes have since appeared mocking the conservative people. This isn’t the first time Jibon Ahmed made headlines. He was thrashed by Islamists in 2015 for helping Bangladeshi-American atheist blogger Avijit Roy and his wife reach the hospital after they were attacked.  After finding the couple, he said, he helped them into an auto-rickshaw and took them to the hospital, where Mr. Roy died. This incident comes at a time when journalists are facing a wide range of threats in Bangladesh.