When Shamsuzzaman Shams walked out of prison on bail last week, his colleagues draped garlands around the Bangladeshi journalist’s neck.
Shams, a reporter for the daily Prothom Alo newspaper, had spent six days in the Dhaka Central Jail over accusations that he published “false news” about food prices.
He now faces two legal complaints under the country’s Digital Security Act, and his colleague, Prothom Alo editor Matiur Rahman, is named in one of those cases.
The arrest came as analysts noted a rise in the legal harassment of journalists in Bangladesh, often under the security measure. Some media advocates have said that authorities are too quick to use the law instead of the Press Council to mediate complaints involving the news media.
Introduced in 2018, the Digital Security Act was drafted to protect against online content deemed to defame or harm the nation.
Media advocates say the law’s wide provisions allow for authorities to silence critics and stifle free expression. The act allows searches without a warrant and carries sentences of up to 14 years in prison.
Between October 2018 and August 2022, the act has been cited in 1,029 cases including cases involving 301 politicians and 280 journalists, a report by the Bangladesh research group, Centre for Governance Studies, found.
In Shams’s case, the arrest is linked to a mistake that his paper says it tried to quickly correct.
Shams had interviewed residents about their lives on Independence Day in Bangladesh.
As part of that reporting on March 26, Prothom Alo shared a graphic on its Facebook page that included a quote from a laborer. But an accompanying photograph erroneously showed a child who was also featured in Shams article rather than the laborer, said the paper’s executive editor, Sajjad Sharif.
“We removed the ‘graphic card’ from our Facebook page soon after posting it, fearing that it might confuse readers,” Sharif told VOA. “And a correction note was also published beneath the online report.”
Joint editor Sohrab Hassan added that while the outlet tried to correct its error in the graphic, it stands by the reporting.
“After learning about the story, we took it down from our social media post; however, we do stand by our print story,” he said.
Three days later — in the early hours of March 29 — more than a dozen officers came to Shams’s home in Savar, a city in Dhaka district.
The agents searched the journalist’s room, confiscated a laptop, mobile phones and a portable hard disk, and detained him.
VOA emailed the Information and Communications Technology Ministry for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
The minister for law, Anisul Huq, told reporters shortly after Sham’s arrest that the journalist had “misrepresented facts with the mala fide intention of creating discontent.”
The minister said that the case against the media outlet was not filed by the government and that “due process will follow.”
Sharif questioned why the case against his team was dealt with under the Digital Security Act instead of being referred to the Press Council, which is supposed to handle such matters.
The latter body reviews complaints against the news media. It has the power to investigate complaints and issue warnings.
The secretary general of the writers’ group PEN International Bangladesh, Syeda Aireen Jaman, said she believes the arrest is an attempt to create fear.
Speaking about the case that led to Shams’s arrest, Jaman said, “This was just a mistake, nothing else — totally unintentional from the journalistic point of view.”
Referring to the Digital Security Act, she said, “I would go so far as to say that it’s a draconian law created by the government to target individuals they dislike for no justifiable reason, simply because these individuals speak the truth.”
Faruq Faisel, the regional director for rights organization Article 19, said the rights organization is “deeply concerned about the current state of press freedom in Bangladesh,” adding that it is “disheartening to see an increase in such incidents.”
Faisel said the lawsuit against the journalists risks creating an “environment of fear” and that the Digital Security Act “seems biased in favor of the government.”
Bangladesh dropped 10 points on the World Press Freedom Index in 2022. It currently ranks 162 out of 180 countries, where No. 1 represents the best environment for media, according to Reporters Without Borders.
The media watchdog described the Digital Security Act as “one of the world’s most draconian laws for journalists” and said it is often used to keep media workers in prison.
