Freedom of Expression is a top casualty under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, illegally in power since 2009. In its statement on May 4, 2023 on “Bangladesh Regime’s War Against the Media,” the Coalition for Human Rights & Democracy in Bangladesh (CHRD Bangladesh) listed a few of the cases of serious rights abuses and its continued […]
The Coalition for Human Rights & Democracy in Bangladesh (CHRD Bangladesh) joins the United Nations in its recent demand to amend Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act (DSA). Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, made the demand on March 7, 2023, further regretting the continuation of “criminal sentences” under the DSA against freedom of […]
India’s hard-right Hindu nationalist government puts a premium on sidestepping Muslim minority rights, most recently through state-sponsored surveillance and record-setting internet shutdowns in key areas. New damning evidence of India’s digital rights violations for five years straight reinforces the country’s brand of punitive controls on Muslim minorities, chiefly in the Indian illegally-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). […]
The Coalition for Human Rights & Democracy in Bangladesh (CHRD Bangladesh) joins the United Nations in condemning the protracted persecution of journalists and human rights defenders in Bangladesh. It is in particular reference to journalist Rozina Islam, who, in 2021 reported corruption in the Ministry of Health in procuring and dispensing Covid-19 vaccinations. She was […]
The Coalition for Human Rights & Democracy in Bangladesh (CHRD Bangladesh) strongly condemns the recent closure of 191 websites in Bangladesh for allegedly publishing “anti-state news.” It is another nail in an almost coffin of media freedom and public expression by Sheikh Hasina, the autocratic Prime Minister of the country since 2009. The freedom of […]
Dr. Pinaki Bhattacharya, a physician turned writer and a popular online political activist now residing in Paris, France and Mushfiqul Fazal Ansary, a reputed diplomatic, White House and U.S. State Department correspondent in Washington D.C., were indicted in Dhaka under the draconian Digital Security Act (DSA) on charges of “conspiracy and tarnishing the image of […]
More than 100 journalists have been sued under the DSA between January 2019 and May 2021, and at least 39 of them were arrested. The DSA, enacted in 2018, has vague provisions criminalising legitimate forms of expression. More than 1000 people have been arrested under the law since and have been subjected to a wide […]
The Pentagon’s offer of “condolence money” to the relatives of the ten people (seven of them children) who were killed in the final U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan—originally declared righteous and necessary—bears a troubling connection to the government’s ongoing efforts to get its hands on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and punish him for exposing the inconvenient […]