Bangladeshi journalist appreciates AI’s support.

On March 8, 2005, Bangladeshi journalist Sumi Khan visited AI’s United Kingdom section to talk about her experiences as a campaigning journalist and human rights defender. Soon after her return to Bangladesh, she received a written death threat, purportedly from local Islamist groups, saying that her home and office would be attacked with grenades if she reported on their activities again. Sumi Khan has worked to expose those responsible for crimes such as child- and arms-trafficking in her role as a reporter for the magazine Weekly 2000 in the port city of Chittagong in southern Bangladesh. April 2004, as she was on the way to the courier office to send a report to her editor, a three-wheeled taxi pulled up and three men got out and began to beat her and stab her hands and face. Though Sumi fought back, she was beaten unconscious. Her attackers shouted at her that she would be killed if she continued writing. They deliberately harmed her hands so that she would not be able to write.