By Maaz Hussain / Voice of America
April 19, 2016; NEW DELHI
Police in Bangladesh have arrested a veteran journalist on
charges of plotting to kill the formerly U.S.-based son of Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina, and they are preparing to arrest another newspaper editor in the
same case.
Rights group campaigners say that the Hasina-led government
has been using harsh tactics to crack down on dissent, which, they say, could
threaten freedom of speech and press in Bangladesh.
The Hasina-led government relies on such tactics as its key
weapon after “occupying the office without the people’s true mandate,” said
legal rights activist Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman, liaison officer of the Hong
Kong-based Asian Legal Resource Center.
“The use of strong-arm tactics is not surprising in a
jurisdiction where the basic rule-of-law institutions, like the law enforcement
agencies, the crime investigation agency, the prosecution and the courts,
survive as subjugated tools in the hands of the government of the day,”
Ashrafuzzaman told VOA.
Hasina and her Awami League-led government are using
sedition and criminal defamation laws to systematically silence media voices
that they view as being hostile to their interests, said Phil Robertson, Asia
deputy director of Human Rights Watch.
“By going after leading editors of newspapers and magazines
using harsh criminal charges, it's clear she's engaged in a bare-knuckled
pummeling of what remains of Bangladeshis' rights to freedom of the press and
freedom of expression,” Robertson told VOA.
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