Freedom of the Press 2016 report from Freedom House: Bangladesh
Status change explanation:
Bangladesh’s status declined from Partly Free to Not Free due to the murders of
four bloggers and a publisher by Islamist militants, threats and nonfatal
attacks against other writers, continued legal harassment of media outlets and
press freedom advocates, government-sanctioned economic pressure on certain
outlets, and attempts to censor social media.
Overview
Bangladesh’s media environment
suffered major setbacks in 2015. The year was marked by deadly attacks against
bloggers and a spate of politically motivated legal cases against journalists.
Growing concerns over state censorship—including of internet-based content—also
had a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
Key Developments
Among other abusive legal cases
against journalists, the chairman and a former employee of Ekushey TV were
charged with sedition after the station aired a speech by an exiled politician.
In November, the government
announced that online news portals would be required to register with the
authorities, and that the accreditation of journalists at unregistered media
outlets would be canceled.
Four bloggers who were critical
of fundamentalist Islam were assassinated during the year. The involvement of
Islamist extremist groups was suspected or confirmed in each of the attacks.
Several major companies
discontinued advertising in the country’s two largest opposition newspapers
following pressure from ... officials.
Legal Environment
Although the constitution
provides for freedom of expression, subject to “reasonable restrictions,” the
press is constrained by national security legislation as well as sedition and
criminal libel laws, which are occasionally used to arrest and prosecute
journalists.
Impunity is the norm for those
who perpetrate crimes against journalists, and police investigations generally
proceed slowly, if at all. Law enforcement authorities largely failed to curb
or punish the series of violent attacks on bloggers and other writers during
2015. Officials sometimes advised those who felt threatened to stop writing or
leave the country. However, in December, a Dhaka court convicted eight people
for the 2013 murder of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider. Two were sentenced to death,
including the organizer of the attack, who was sentenced in absentia and remained
at large.
Sedition laws can be applied
broadly, and penalties range from fines to life in prison or even the death
penalty if the accused is found to have undermined the constitution. Ekushey TV
chairman Abdus Salam and former staffer Kanak Sarwar were arrested and charged
with sedition in January and March 2015, respectively, after the station aired
a speech by exiled Bangladesh Nationalist Party vice chairman Tarique Rahman;
it was unclear at year’s end whether a court date had been set for their trial.
Journalists can also be arrested under the 1974 Special Powers Act—which allows
detentions of up to 120 days without trial—for stories that are critical of
government officials or policies. Reporters sometimes face contempt of court
charges for critical reporting on judicial proceedings or personnel.
The opposition daily Amar Desh
has faced a barrage of legal and regulatory threats over the past several
years. In August 2015, acting editor and majority owner Mahmudur Rahman was
sentenced to three years in prison on charges of corruption stemming from his
time as an adviser to the previous national government. Several other cases
against him were pending at year’s end, including one for sedition in
connection with a report questioning the impartiality of a
government-established war crimes tribunal. A ban on the newspaper’s print
edition that had been enacted two years earlier remained in place throughout
2015. Another opposition newspaper, Prothom Alo, is frequently entangled in
legal cases; its staff has characterized the proceedings, which have included
charges of defamation and contempt of court, as a form of government
intimidation.
Legislation adopted in 2013 to
amend the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act—which covers
online crimes including defamation and blasphemy—upheld the right of law
enforcement agencies to arrest and indefinitely detain suspects without bail,
and imposed no limits on officials’ power during the investigatory period. In
addition, penalties for online offenses are set at between 7 and 14 years in
prison, regardless of whether the crime is related to defamation or national
security. The ICT Act has been used to arrest and charge a number of
individuals for online expression in recent years, including bloggers and mainstream
journalists. In August 2015, the editor of the online portal Uttaradhikar 71
News, Probir Sikdar, was arrested for “tarnishing the image” of a cabinet
member from the ruling Awami League after he wrote on Facebook that he had been
threatened by the official as well as by a convicted war criminal and a
businessman; the threats came after Sikdar had posted reports online about the
two latter individuals. He was released on bail the next day following protests
from freedom of expression advocates.
The 2009 Right to Information
(RTI) Act, which applies to all information held by public bodies, has improved
government transparency and accountability. It simplified the fees required to
access information, overrode existing secrecy legislation, and granted greater
independence to the Information Commission, tasked with overseeing and
promoting the law. However, ongoing challenges include low response rates to
requests for information and the need to increase awareness of the RTI Act
among the general public and the authorities.
The Ministry of Information
controls broadcast licensing for both commercial and community outlets.
Television stations have occasionally been closed, ostensibly for being in
breach of broadcasting regulations. A comprehensive broadcast policy, intended
to simplify the existing patchwork of laws and regulations, has been under
discussion for several years by a committee composed of government and industry
representatives and other stakeholders. In 2014 the cabinet approved a draft broadcast
policy that contained a range of potentially restrictive provisions, including
a prohibition on programming deemed excessively critical of state priorities or
threatening to national security and sovereignty. The measure called for the
establishment of a nominally independent regulatory commission to oversee its
implementation, but it also empowered the Ministry of Information to revoke the
broadcasting licenses of noncompliant outlets. Parliament had yet to approve
the policy at the end of 2015.
In November 2015, the government
announced that all online news portals would be required to register with the
authorities by December 15, and that the accreditation of journalists with
unregistered media outlets would be canceled.
The government at times
interferes with journalistic work through surveillance. Some journalists’
e-mail correspondence is reportedly watched by police, and those brought in for
questioning have been asked to supply personal internet passwords to
intelligence officers. An official government committee was formed in March
2014 to monitor blogs and social-media sites and to identify individuals who
produced or posted anti-Islamic content. The following month, it was reported
that the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a security unit that has been accused of
extrajudicial killings and other abuses, had attempted to procure advanced
mobile surveillance technology from Neosoft, a Swiss company. The proposed
purchase was halted following a May 2015 change to Switzerland’s export
licensing law designed to prevent the proliferation of surveillance
technologies that could be used to commit human rights violations.
The actions of Bangladesh’s
International Crimes Tribunal, which is tasked with examining war crimes
associated with the country’s 1971 independence conflict, had a negative effect
on advocacy for journalists’ professional rights during the year. In December
2014, British journalist David Bergman was found guilty of contempt of court
over articles in which he questioned the tribunal’s conduct and its death-toll
figures from the war. In response, 50 journalists, academics, writers, and
activists signed a statement that was published in several newspapers,
expressing concern over Bergman’s conviction. (One withdrew her name shortly thereafter.)
In January 2015, the tribunal demanded that the signatories explain their
statement on the grounds that it challenged the tribunal’s “transparency and
openness.” Subsequently, 26 signatories issued unconditional apologies, which
the tribunal accepted. The remaining 23 were charged with contempt of court;
one was convicted and 22 were eventually exonerated.
Political Environment
The Bangladeshi media
collectively present an array of views. However, political coverage can be
highly partisan, as the owners of many private outlets exert editorial control
that reflects their personal political affiliations. Private broadcast outlets
are required to air selected government-produced news segments and official
speeches. Reporting on labor disputes has become more biased, as businessmen
involved in the garment industry have purchased both print and broadcast
outlets. The coverage from these outlets often highlights violence or work
disruptions initiated by workers, rather than the underlying labor rights
issues.
Private media outlets risk
government pressure in response to their coverage. In February 2015, the
private broadcaster BanglaVision indefinitely suspended the television program
Frontline, ostensibly because of technical problems. The show was known for its
critical discussions on current affairs, and the authorities had reportedly
attempted to interfere with the station’s staffing and content in the weeks
before the suspension.
Censorship of internet-based
content has become increasingly common in Bangladesh, with periodic blocking of
YouTube, Facebook, other social-media and messaging applications, and
high-profile Bengali blogs in recent years. In November 2015, the government
temporarily blocked the social-media platforms Facebook, Viber, and WhatsApp,
allegedly to maintain public order at the time of the controversial sentencing
of opposition leaders for war crimes dating back to 1971.
Death threats and attacks against
bloggers have exacerbated self-censorship, leading many to stop writing, go
into hiding, or leave the country. Some professional journalists practice
self-censorship to avoid repercussions when reporting on sensitive topics like
the military and judiciary. Tensions have increased in recent years with
respect to coverage of the International Crimes Tribunal and the place of Islam
in politics and society. Self-censorship can also stem from the business or
political interests of media owners.
Journalists faced obstruction and
violence while reporting in the field during 2015. Rajib Sen Prince, a
correspondent with privately owned Mohona TV, was wounded in November 2015 when
gunmen opened fire on a press vehicle returning from the funeral of an
opposition leader who had been executed for war crimes.
There was also an increase in
threats and retaliatory violence by criminal organizations, party activists,
business owners, and Islamist groups. Extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda in the
Indian Subcontinent were confirmed or suspected in four assassinations that
targeted bloggers who had criticized Islamic fundamentalism; one of the
bloggers, Bangladeshi American writer Avijit Roy, was stabbed and hacked to
death while visiting Dhaka. His publisher was killed in a separate attack.
Other bloggers were threatened or assaulted. In October, the radical Islamist
group Ansarullah Bangla Team allegedly sent threats via e-mail to several media
outlets, including the online newspaper BDNews24 and the Dhaka Tribune. The
messages warned them against employing female staffers or criticizing either
“jihadi activities” or the murderers of “atheists”; the authors also threatened
to kill atheist bloggers living in Bangladesh or abroad.
...Police brutality toward
reporters and photographers attempting to document political protests or other
sensitive events remains a concern. Some journalists receive threatening
telephone calls from ... agencies seeking to prevent negative coverage.
Economic Environment
There is a wide variety of
privately owned daily and weekly print publications. Private broadcasting
continues to expand, with more than 40 television and two dozen radio
stations—including three commercial FM outlets and 14 community stations. The
state directly owns or influences several broadcast outlets, including the
public BTV, which remains the sole terrestrial television broadcaster with
national reach.
Access to the internet is
generally unrestricted, though the penetration rate was still less than 10
percent of the population as of 2014. During the past few years, the number of
online news outlets, including news websites and internet-based radio stations,
has increased dramatically, as has use of major social-networking sites.
Private broadcast and print media
in Bangladesh are often owned by business conglomerates controlled by
politically influential individuals or families with extensive assets in other
industries, such as manufacturing and finance. Some such outlets allow the
interests of their owners to influence their news coverage.
Many families in rural
areas—where the majority of the country’s population lives—do not have a
reliable supply of electricity or cannot afford a television set. Access to
television in urban areas is much more common. Low literacy rates in rural
areas limit the reach of newspapers outside of urban centers.
Political considerations
influence the distribution of government advertising revenue and subsidized
newsprint, on which many publications depend. Private media owners and
corporate interests are also able to influence content through the allocation
of advertising....
Because salaries are often low,
some journalists are open to bribes or other incentives to slant their coverage
or suppress embarrassing or sensitive information.
NOTE: Slightly edited]
