Gabriel Thompson

Dr. Vera Heuer

IS-339

HR: Attached Article

x. Gabe Thompson

https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/blogging-bangladesh-caught-between-rock-and-hard-place-3235271

 

I found this article about controversies in Bangladesh pertaining to the safety of bloggers who comment on socio-political issues in Bangladesh. The article is about a writer named Rajesh Paul who no longer blogs like he used to out of fear for him and his families safety. Rajesh began to steer away from blogging in 2013 due to a spate of fatal attacks and killings of bloggers who commented on similar socio-political issues. Shortly after this spike in attacks the government in Bangladesh released Information and Communication Technology (ICT) act which was widely utilized to persecute and harass critical writers, bloggers and journalists. Out of fear many bloggers began to leave Bangladesh because of the lack of protections put in place for them. In more recent years luckily due to anti-militant crackdowns by law enforcement, incidents of violence towards bloggers has significantly decreased. Although bloggers in Bangladesh still fear that the space for free thinking and blogging has been shrunk due to various legislations like the Digital Security Act. Although, the government in Bangladesh has yet to bring justice to bloggers who have been victims of violence. For example, in the Shahbagh movement which demanded death penalties for war criminals in the 1971 liberation war there were 10 activists killed, none of the families were given proper justice because the court dismissed most of the cases and gave them to lower courts to handle. The primary takeaway from this article for me was the lack of care the Bangladesh government has for a space designed for critical writing and analysis of socio-political issues, potentially out of fear of national security.