Human rights organisation Amnesty International has called on the interim government of Bangladesh to restore freedom of expression in Bangladesh.
"Repeal the Cyber Security Act (CSA) 2023," Amnesty described the law as "a continuation of successive repressive legislations in Bangladesh that have repeatedly facilitated the state's crackdown on civic space and human rights," Amnesty said at a media briefing.
The Cyber Security Act and the Continuing Lawfare Against Dissent in Bangladesh, reveals that the CSA rehashes almost all of the repressive provisions of the repealed Digital Security Act (DSA) 2018 and Section 57 of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Act 2006 that preceded it, and has been weaponized to target journalists, human rights defenders and dissidents despite the former government's repeated assurances to the contrary.
"The recent deadly crackdown on the student protests in Bangladesh has taken place against a wider backdrop of increasing intolerance and suppression of dissent in the country. The interim government must undo this long-standing legacy of quashing dissent by repealing laws such as the CSA which threaten and undermine the rights to freedom of expression, liberty and privacy in Bangladesh," said Taqbir Huda, regional researcher for South Asia at Amnesty International.
"The CSA is essentially a replication of the DSA. It is merely an attempt to douse growing international pressure through performative reforms which repackage authoritarian provisions and practices into an ostensibly new law. Such tokenism makes a mockery of international human rights treaties to which Bangladesh is a state party and creates a continuum of injustice. This must end."
Amnesty International's analysis found that the CSA retains 58 of the 62 provisions of the DSA: 28 provisions are retained verbatim while 25 provisions are retained with minor changes (such as alterations to terminology or sentencing). The remaining five provisions are retained with some changes to procedural requirements. Further, when enacting the CSA to replace the DSA, the former Government of Bangladesh failed to incorporate (in whole or in part) all but one of the nine legislative recommendations made by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in June 2022.
Crucially, the CSA retains the five authoritarian speech offences under the DSA that were weaponized by the ruling party and its affiliates to muzzle peaceful dissent. These speech offences penalize opinions that can be deemed by authorities as 'propaganda against the spirit of liberation war', 'false and offensive information', 'hurting religious sentiments', 'defamatory information' or 'deteriorating law and order' by 'disrupting communal harmony'.
It also allows the government-controlled Cyber Security Agency or law enforcement agencies to make blanket requests for information to be blocked or removed from the cyber space based on vague grounds such as 'threat to cyber security', without any judicial oversight or opportunity to appeal the process. Although termed a 'request', such arbitrary demands by the Cyber Security Agency and law enforcement forces are binding on the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
Amnesty International has analysed and investigated emblematic CSA cases filed against blogger Selim Khan, cartoonist and climate activist Shamim Ashraf and religious preacher Akramuzzaman Bin Abdus Salam in the briefing.
"The authorities' persistent lawfare against peaceful dissent over the past decade has escalated repression against journalists, human rights defenders and dissidents and created a state of self-censorship which will continue to exist unless the ongoing cases are dropped and repressive provisions in CSA are fully removed," said Taqbir Huda.
"Amnesty International calls on the Interim Government of Bangladesh to repeal or substantially amend the CSA to fully comply with international human rights law. The authorities must immediately release all those who remain detained under the ICT Act, DSA, CSA or any other law solely for peacefully exercising their human rights and drop all the charges against them," the Amnesty said.
