Human Rights Watch has slammed the Bangladesh government for the arrest of four bloggers and Amar Desh acting editor Mahmudur Rahman.
The global rights body in a release on Monday said the government should stop targeting individuals and media publishing stories the government deems objectionable and reaffirm its commitment to freedom of expression, a principle which the ruling Awami League has long claimed to champion.
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch said, “Bangladeshis should have the right to peacefully express their views, and the state should address these demands through the rule of law instead of embarking on politically motivated arrests.”
“These bloggers can only be called political prisoners, since they are in jail for peacefully expressing their views,” Adams said. “Freedom of religion also includes the freedom not to believe in a religion and to make those views known. For a government that has always presented itself as liberal and secular this is a huge retreat from the values it claims to uphold.”
The Shahbagh protests appear to have sharpened along religious lines, with some Islamist clerics demanding a blasphemy law, and with others in the Shahbagh movement publishing statements supporting atheist principles, largely through blogs and other electronic media.
On April 2 and 3, police arrested four bloggers, Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Mashiur Rahman Biplob, Rasel Parvez, and Asif Mohiuddin, who had posted articles either critical of the government’s attempts to appease the Islamist demands or that said the government had failed to address the concerns of minority religions.
Adams also criticised the government for the recent arrest of Amar Desh acting editor Mahmudur Rahman.
“The arrest of a newspaper editor and shuttering his paper, which printed material that was terribly embarrassing to the government – so embarrassing that the chairman of the court resigned – suggests that the purpose of the arrests is to silence those who are critical of the way the war crimes trials have been carried out,” said Adams.
Mahmudur Rahman was arrested on April 11 and subsequently charged with sedition and unlawful publication of a hacked conversation between the ICT judges and an external consultant.
Source: UNBConnect
