Dhaka, Bangladesh – Environmental activist Shahnewaz Chowdhury is recently out on bail. The 37-year-old was arrested in May under the Digital Security Act (DSA) for a Facebook post expressing fear about the assignment of a coal-fired force in Banshkhali, southeastern Bangladesh.
Chowdhury, from Gandamara in Banshkhali, had called on young people to “resist injustice” because he feared the “destructive factory would affect the environment. “He was charged with publishing “false and offensive” data and creating “chaos” under the DSA.
“We demand an environmentally friendly factory that takes advantage of the grid and doesn’t harm the environment, and since I wrote about that, I was arrested under the Digital Security Act and had to go to criminal for 80 days,” said Chowdhury, who may only face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the crimes he is charged with under the law. which human rights teams have described as “draconian”.
The penalty provided for by law is 14 years.
Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina’s government defended the law, saying it was mandatory to order.
The government’s plan to launch a coal-fired power plant in environmentally sensitive areas of the country has sparked protests. At least 12 employees and citizens of the domain have been killed in the past six years by police firing protests against the Banshkhali factory.
The protests also opposed the giant coal-fired power plant in the southwest Rampal region near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest.
The protests prompted the government to label some activists as “terrorists” after the DSA was enacted in 2018.
The law provides for a criminal sentence of up to 14 years for anyone who secretly searches government officials or collects data from a government company, computer or other virtual device. It also provides for similar sentences for those who spread “negative propaganda” about the country’s 1971 war of independence and its founding leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of Prime Minister Hasina.
Critics say the provision allows police to arrest bloodhounds and confiscate their devices without a warrant, prompting the United Nations to accuse Bangladesh of the law to crack down on environmental activism. He called on the government to replace the law and prevent it from arresting people. .
During a visit to Bangladesh last month, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change Ian Fry called for an end to harassment of climate change activists.
“Several human rights bodies, the UN, have long raised considerations about the broad and ill-defined provisions of the Digital Security Act that have been used to punish critics of the government,” Fry said.
“The harassment, threats and intimidation against human rights defenders and indigenous climate peoples will have to stop,” Fry said at a press conference on Thursday.
“The Digital Security Act needs to be amended so that human rights defenders and other indigenous people linked to climate change are not caught up in a broad defining challenge such as terrorism. These other people are not terrorists.
The DSA has also been criticized through human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, who have said the government has exploited it to harass and indefinitely detain news hounds and government critics.
Former UN human rights leader Michelle Bachelet has for a “review” of the DSA in the past.
More than 1,000 more people have been detained under the DSA, according to local media figures.
“What we are seeing now is that some of the government offices are corporations harassing environmental activists,” said environmental lawyer Rizwana Hasan.
“We see that agencies are also taking the initiative to officially criminalize environmental defenders,” Hasan told Al Jazeera.
Bangladeshi Justice Minister Anisul Huq said in an interview with Al Jazeera that expired last year that the DSA would be reviewed and amended.