Bangladesh court grants bail to top editor after outcry

Dhaka, Bangladesh (AFP):

Bangladesh’s high court granted bail on Sunday to Matiur Rahman, one of the country’s most respected editors, after he was charged under a controversial digital law.

Matiur Rahman, 78, the editor of the Bengali-language daily Prothom Alo, requested bail after a lawyer filed a case against him and a reporter last week under the Digital Security Act.

The law has been criticised by the United Nations and human rights groups as a tool to crack down on dissent and harass journalists in retaliation for their work.

“He was granted six weeks of bail,” Rahman’s lawyer Z.I. Khan Panna told journalists outside the courthouse.

The case against Rahman and reporter Shamsuzzaman Shams stems from a March 26 story on Bangladesh’s Independence Day that quoted ordinary people on their struggles to afford basic necessities.

As in many nations, the food prices have soared in Bangladesh since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The taka has also fallen sharply against the US dollar.

“What is the use of this freedom if we can’t afford rice,” one labourer told Prothom Alo.

The use of the Digital Security Act against one of Bangladesh’s last remaining bastions of independent journalism sparked immediate international outcry.

UN rights chief Volker Turk called for an immediate moratorium of the law, which he said Dhaka was using “to arrest, harass and intimidate journalists and human rights defenders, and to muzzle critical voices online”.

Reporters Without Borders said that the case has no legal basis and is “clearly an act of intimidation by the government towards all journalists”.

Rahman could face up to seven years in jail on these charges if convicted.

Concerns about press freedom

Activist Rezaur Rahman Lenin welcomed the bail announcement, but added that Rahman “should not have been sued in the first place”.

“The Digital Security Act is a repressive law and it should be scrapped without any hesitation,” he said.

According to a police filing after a Right to Information query by Amnesty International, between October 2018 and June 2021 at least 2,646 cases were filed under the act, with almost 6,000 people accused and 2,607 arrested.

This has stoked concerns that the South Asian nation of 170 million people has taken an increasingly authoritarian turn under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has been in power since 2009.

A string of violent attacks on journalists, including those covering Supreme Court elections, prompted a statement of concern this week from 12 Western nations belonging to the Media Freedom Coalition.

The coalition also flagged the “recent reported detention of a Prothom Alo journalist”.

Shams was detained on March 29 after an earlier complaint filed by a politician over the same cost-of-living crisis story.

On Saturday, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said the reporter was arrested over “‘child exploitation’ as he offered ten taka to a 9-year-old boy and then expressed his own views in the name of that child”.

It said the foreign press “fabricated” information that the reporter was arrested due to his cost of living story.

The case filed against Shams, however, makes no reference to child abuse charges, but is related to the digital security act.

Shams could face up to seven years in prison if convicted.