Academics and campaigners on Monday at a webinar called for imposing a moratorium on the Digital Security Act 2018, making the list of people prosecuted under the law public, and forming a judicial committee to examine the procedural flaws and compensate those who were victimised.
They also called for the release of those who were languishing in prison under DSA and for examining the transparency of the investigation process under the law.
The Centre for Governance Studies hosted a webinar titled ‘Digital Security Act 2018: What to Do?’ where the current situation, the victims’ plight, and recommendations from the panel of experts were discussed.
Ali Riaz, distinguished professor of political science at Illinois State University, United States, said that they had objected to the formulation of the DSA as they feared it would criminalise freedom of expression. After four years and a half, he said, the concerns turned into a reality.
He said that the government had a couple of times announced that it would amend the DSA, but no seriousness was seen.
The academic, who has been conducting research on DSA for over three years, called for imposing a moratorium immediately on DSA and forming a judicial committee to examine the procedural flaws and compensate those who were victimised.
Ali Riaz said that the government received a technical note from the United Nations in June 2022 but kept it secret until the UN made it public in recent weeks.
Iftekharuzzaman, the executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh, added that the government should impose a moratorium on the DSA until a new cyber-security law was enacted.
‘This law is not in a position to be amended. It must be repealed,’ he said. Terming the law ‘repressive’, he said that the DSA was stifling freedom of expression, and was being used to suppress dissenting voices.
Out of the 1,293 cases they could track, an Ali Riaz-led investigation found that 3,653 people were prosecuted under DSA.
There is an instance of 11 DSA cases against one person, he said.
Ali Riaz also urged Ain O Salish, Odhikar, Article 19, and TIB, among others, to keep records of all the documents related to DSA repression.
Retired Brigadier General M Sakhawat Hossain, a former election commissioner, said when he writes something, he keeps in mind the possible ramifications under DSA.
‘I have not opened a Facebook account or Linkedin.’
Didarul Islam Bhuiyan, economic coordinator at the state reform movement and a member of the DSA Victim Network, said that he received threats and was arrested while reporting about the discrimination over the relief distribution among the people in Kurigram and Narayanganj in 2020.
He had been taken to the Rapid Action Battalion-3 office, where he was kept for one day and law enforcement officials questioned him for seven hours with him being handcuffed and blindfolded.
CGS executive director Zillur Rahman, who moderated the webinar, noted that Khadijatul Kubra, 17, a student at Jagannath University, was prosecuted in two DSA cases for hosting a talk show online.
He said that journalists were victims of this act.
