Media protest police attack at test ground

DHAKA, Apr 17 (Reuters) Nearly 300 local media representatives took to the streets in Dhaka today to protest a police attack on colleagues covering the ongoing second test between Bangladesh and Australia.

At least 10 reporters and photographers were injured yesterday when police beat them with batons at the divisional stadium in Chittagong.

Today's Bangladesh newspapers carried neither match details nor photographs as print media boycotted the test.

The press box at the stadium was empty except a handful covering for foreign media after the Bangladesh Sports Reporters Association called for a boycott of the test and the three one-dayers which follow later in the month.

''We condemn the attack and demand exemplary punishment for the police responsible. We can not sit idle when men in uniform swoop on reporters without provocation,'' journalist leader Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury said.

Around 20 officers with batons damaged cameras and clashed with about 50 reporters and photographers who had been protesting an earlier incident during the lunch break yesterday.

They had been upset over an incident before play began when a policeman assaulted a photographer in a row over using transport in the restricted stadium vicinity.

A reporter from a Chittagong-based daily, who was hit on the head by a baton, was still unconscious at a hospital in Chittagong.

Another cameraman from a Dhaka-based private television channel was transferred to a Dhaka hospital with head injuries.

''We are trying to resolve the matter and do the needful (including punishment for the offenders),'' Mohammad Abdul Quayyum, inspector-general of Bangladesh police told Reuters.

REUTERS PM HS1340