"It is only an insecure and authoritarian government that uses a pandemic to arrest cartoonists, journalists, and activists."

Tortured for Satire

On March 4th the Bangladeshi cartoonist Kabir Kishore left prison after being jailed for ten months by Bangladeshi authorities, for a series of cartoons that satirised government officials and criticised the state’s approach to tackling the coronavirus outbreak in the country. Mr. Kishore recounted being tortured in prison (which the government denies), and once he got out was treated for “a burst eardrum, leg injuries, diabetes” according to an interview given to the Committee to Protect Journalists by Mr. Kishore at the end of March.

His colleague, the writer Mushtaq Ahmed (and co-accused in the same case), criticised the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Unlike Kabir Kishore, however, Mr. Ahmed would never leave jail alive: he died in prison on February 25th, a week before Kishore was released. Mushtaq Ahmed, like Kishore, was subjected to torture (tw: graphic descriptions of torture and the aftermath).

Why would a cartoonist and a writer be jailed and tortured for months, for criticising how their government’s management of the coronavirus outbreak, in the first place?

According to the Bangladeshi government, they had allegedly been “spreading rumours and misinformation on Facebook about the coronavirus situation”, and thus violating the Digital Security Act 2018 – the nation’s controversial cybercrime legislation. The government has claimed that the law is "not an instrument for curbing dissent and criticism", and that the “aim is to make the digital sphere as secure as the physical” – but the reality is that the law has led to “a chilling effect on press freedom and civil society in Bangladesh”, according to the head of the Asia-Pacific section at the UN’s High Commission for Human Rights, Rory Mungoven.

Mr. Mushtaq Ahmed’s death in custody is the consequence of a draconian law that has, since its enacting in 2018 despite mass condemnation from the media and human rights activists, criminalised any criticism of the country’s “image”, flag, anthem, the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence, and government officials - with warrants not necessary for arrests. In a report written early last month on the country’s Digital Security Act, Deutsche Welle pointed to frustrations by journalists in Bangladesh:

Some Bangladeshi newspapers have published editorials recently about how the DSA has limited investigative reporting on corruption involving high-level officials. The media has opted for self-censorship to keep themselves safe.

"Since its introduction in October 2018, the law has contributed to the deepening of the culture of fear. It has been successful in sending a chilling message to citizens, heightening self-censorship among journalists and choking social media," Riaz* said.

(*Ali Riaz is a Distinguished Professor​ of Politics and Government at Illinois State University in the US)

During the summer of 2020, a fifteen year-old child was arrested for “allegedly insulting the Prime Minister on Facebook following the decision to impose an additional tax on using mobile phones”, according to a July 2020 report by Article 19, in addition to two lecturers at a university that were arrested “after they posted criticism of the previous health minister and his impact on the country’s health system, saying this was leaving coronavirus patients with insufficient care.”

The report also noted that:

In 2018, ARTICLE 19 recorded a total of 71 cases filed against practitioners of freedom of expression including journalists under the then section 57 of the ICT act and then newly enacted DSA which came into effect in October of the year. In 2019, the number of recorded cases initiated under DSA was 63.  However, in the first six months of this year, 113 cases have been recorded of this kind.  A total of 208 people have been accused in these cases due to mere expression of opinion, of whom 53 are journalists. Of the accused, 114 were arrested immediately, most of whom are still awaiting bail.

Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch’s South Asia Director, described last week how “even children have not been spared for posting anything to social media that could be interpreted as criticism of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed”:

On March 20, authorities arrested a child for posting a video online “defaming” Sheikh Hasina and her foreign minister, as well as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

One day earlier, police arrested an 18-year-old for posting a caricature of the prime minister on social media. Last year, authorities arrested a child for “defaming” the prime minister after a local ruling party politician said the boy had “badmouthed…our mother-like leader” on Facebook.

Just so we’re clear - kids are being arrested for criticising or making fun of political leaders of their own country on social media.

Children are being detained because of a law that allows the government and police carte blanche to pick up anyone that is remotely critical of the state, more so during the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic, which has seen a severe crackdown on freedom of expression and on calls for government accountability. The ability to call truth to power, and to poke fun at authority, is vital to democracy, and no one should have to be in fear of being seized from their homes or killed in detention for cartoons or words. In the words of Meenakshi Ganguly’s colleague and HRW’s Asia Director, Brad Adams,

It is only an insecure and authoritarian government that uses a pandemic to arrest cartoonists, journalists, and activists.

Nepal drafts its own rules for Social Media

Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and now Nepal, (among many others)– it would appear that Social Media Rules are en vogue in the Global South.

Though it is necessary to hold social media platforms and the Silicon Valley mindset accountable, legislation that uses this as a cover to stifle freedom of expression is, how shall we say, just not cricket. As tech companies expand into and set up shop in the Global South, the dedication to freedom of expression and refusal to censor marginalised or dissenting voices can waver, especially if your local employees could be arrested for not doing what the government demands. Not to mention that for any talk of “protecting” citizens online, governments appear to be quite bad at it in reality.

Nepal’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology drafted the body of what will be known at this point as “Social Media Management Directive 2021” - or SMMD for the purposes of this newsletter - in mid-February of this year, and is currently still in the draft stage, given the current political situation in Nepal. Should it pass, and social media platforms do not register, “the new directives allow the government to restrict all access to the platform in question”, which could cut off, for example, the approximately10.5 million Facebook users in Nepal, according to a February 14th article by The Record. As a Zoom conference held by the Nepali digital rights organisation Body & Data points out:

The “ETA” and “IT” bill that Body & Data is alluding to are the Information Technology Bill which the SMMD is based upon (and which was in the process of being ratified as of February 2021), and the Electronic Transaction Act, which allows for the creation of directions that aid in the implementation of the Act, such as the SMMD. The IT Bill and ETA have come under fir from human rights activists both within Nepal and overseas, due to their broad language and stifling of freedom of expression under very vague definitions of “morality.” As Amnesty International wrote in January 2020 concerning the IT Bill,

Several provisions in the IT Bill do not meet international human rights law and standards. For example, section 94 of the bill vaguely criminalizes people who post content on social media if it is deemed to be against “national unity, self-respect, national interest, relationship between federal units”.

And even though the ETA does not have social media provisions per se, The Record noted that

Section 47 of the Act - which enumerates provisions for punishment, again, in cases that contradict “public morality” and “decent behaviour” - has consistently been employed by successive governments to stifle criticism and dissent on social media. 

In the last two years, from 2018 to 2020, at least 21 individuals, including journalists, have been arrested and charged with ‘cyber crime’ under the ETA, according to data from Freedom Forum. Most cases involve criticism and mockery of public officials like Prime Minister Oli and President Bidya Devi Bhandari. 

PM Oli, if you may recall, was the subject of a January 2021 article by The Record that wrote about allegations that he was was carrying out surveillance on his then cabinet, claiming that

I am keeping a record of everything. You are all being watched. Your activities are being closely monitored.

Not creepy at all.

Last November Body & Data released a report, in conjunction with the Association for Progressive Communications, that examined the failings of the Government of Nepal to protection digital freedom of expression, and looked at the overly broad legislative and government actions used by the Nepali government to censor freedom of expression online. Should the government pass the Social Media Management Directive 2021 as it stands, the rights of Nepali citizens stand to be eroded further. As Body & Data write in their March 26th summary of the Directive,

Through surveillance of our online space, the government want to silence the voices against them by criminalizing act of resistance against authorities. In a broader sense, these types of surveillance and controls are shaping human behavior and attitude to make us citizens docile and law abiding by discouragement of critical discourse and agency over our opinions.

Pak Social Media Rules to be Reviewed?

In January 2021 I asked if the Pakistani government was actually ready to review its own overly broad and stifling social media rules, remarking that:

The Government of Pakistan and departments such as the PTA have not endeared themselves to rights activists and the the tech industry in the past, so there is justified scepticism. As the tweet above by Al Jazeera journalist Asad Hashim points out, this is not the first time that the Government of Pakistan has ostensibly and publicly requested civil society/tech sector feedback, only to ignore it almost entirely. 

The tweet in question was this one:

And last December I said that:

The PTA is a censorious beast with an inordinate amount of power that single-handedly what is immoral and what is not, in tandem with its equally Comstockian sibling, PEMRA, and is exceedingly dishonest when it claims that it has sought “meaningful consultation” (as any digital rights organisation in Pakistan can tell you) at any point. 

After a…lot of more-than-justified criticism by Pakistani and international rights groups and tech bodies, it looks like the Government of Pakistan may be taking one ̶i̶t̶t̶y̶-̶b̶i̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶b̶a̶b̶y̶ tentative step towards an (actually) serious review. At the end of last month DAWN News reported that:

"Prime Minister Imran Khan has constituted an inter-ministerial committee to review the controversial social media rules.

As per a directive issued by the Prime Minister Office on March 29, Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari will be chairperson of the committee comprising Parliamentary Secretary on Law and Justice Maleeka Ali Bukhari, Senator Syed Ali Zafar, Secretary of Information Technology Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui and Chairman of the Pakistan Tele­communication Authority (PTA) retired Maj Gen Amir Azeem Bajwa.

A statement issued by the office of Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan on Tuesday said that the Information Technology and Telecommunication Division would function as the committee’s secretariat. It will submit a report along with its recommendations in the matter to the prime minister within 30 days."

The article also asserts that the committee’s secretariat

would intimate (the) public at large of the date and venue for consultations with all stakeholders, including the petitioners who have challenged the social media rules in the Islamabad High Court.

The petitioners — Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists secretary general Nasir Zaidi, the Awami Workers Party, Dawn’s Employees Union, Amber Rahim Shamsi and citizen Mohammad Ashfaq Jatt — contends that the rules are contrary to the freedom of expression as guaranteed in the Constitution.

The news by DAWN itself comes days after a report by Media Matters for Democracy’s Digital Rights Monitor that said that the PTA had started sending out registration forms, even though

analysis of the Rules by civil society organisations suggests that demanding registration of social media companies with PTA goes beyond the powers vested on PTA under the section 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016, which is the parent Act of the Rules. In addition, this authority has not been given to the PTA under the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organisation) Act that laid the foundation of PTA.

It is far, far too early to tell whether the concerns of stakeholders are taken onboard to actually ensure that the Social Media Rules are progressive and inclusive, and the government has been found to be lacking more than once, as I have indicated on numerous occasions in previous editions of this newsletter. That the government has appointed a new committee to review the Social Media Rules does appear to signal some form of seriousness in regards to actually letting more sensible voices being heeded. Let’s see where this goes, however.