With cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore and writer Mushtaq Ahmed behind bars for more than nine months, a group of citizens, including teachers and rights activists, staged demonstrations at the city’s Central Shaheed Minar yesterday demanding abolishment of the controversial Digital Security Act (DSA).
Mentioning that people are now fighting to establish freedom of speech in the country, the protesters compared the prevailing situation with that of February 1952, when Bangalees raised their voice to establish the right to speak in their mother tongue.
Terming the DSA a draconian law, the protesters said they fear to be under the government’s surveillance round the clock as they feel that they live in a state of “speaking, hearing and seeing no evil”.
Their fear was portrayed through different cultural performances like music of rebellion and freedom, baul songs, recitation of poems and a street drama.
Rights watchdogs and different other organisations are voicing deep concern about arbitrary detention and other forms of harassment of citizens, including journalists and artists, who are facing increasing attacks on their right to freedom of expression.
Speaking at the programme, Prof Anu Muhammad of Jahangirnagar University said everybody knows about the fearful situation prevailing in Bangladesh.
“It’s like the government, its ministers and their followers will engage in unlawful activities and whenever someone will write against those or even draw cartoons against corruption, the authorities will apprehend them using this draconian law,” he said.
Alongside the Digital Security Act, the government is introducing other laws to keep people’s mouth shut, he alleged.
The JU teacher said the government was doing this so that none could write a sentence on Facebook, share a line from a poem or a play. “If the government is so powerful, why is it afraid of a Facebook status? Why a line of a poem or a play shakes the government?”
Anu Muhammad said although human beings are not robots, the government “wants them to be robots” so that people speak in their way.
“People in the government say law takes its own course. But it’s not like that. It is operated by the strength of state power. It is operated the way the government wants it to be operated.”
The professor said it is the people’s constitutional right to stage protests, but the government is violating the right.
At the programme, folk singer Rita Dewan, who landed in jail in a case filed under the DSA, performed baul songs.
“If I live in an independent country, why can’t I sing like a bird?” she questioned.
Rita and her daughters were accused of “hurting the religious sentiment”. A total of four cases were filed against her on similar grounds. She is now out on bail.
In May last year, police detained cartoonist Kishore and writer Mushtaq from their Dhaka homes in a case filed under the DSA.
They were accusing of “spreading rumours and misinformation on Facebook about the coronavirus situation, undermining the image of the Father of the Nation, and the national anthem”.
Police recently pressed charges against photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol, Kishore, Mushtaq and Rashtrochinta activist Didarul Islam Bhuiyan in different cases filed under the DSA last year.
At the rally yesterday, protestors demanded immediate and unconditional release of Kishore and Mushtaq from jail.
