Losing Face: Banning of Facebook in Bangladesh
Map of the districts of Bangladesh
Technology has always dictated our progression as a species. From the earliest hunter gatherer societies to current multi-cultural globalized societies have all leaned heavily on technology to proliferate not only the ideas of comfortable living and sustenance, but also the evolution of each individual society. So it is no surprise that technology plays such a prominent role in universalizing the notion of human rights. And as a reaction to that, governments who have had trouble upholding human rights have tried to control technological advances through censorship to counter any avenue of dissent current technology might provide. But is it really a fruitful idea to try to curb access to technology, be it in the form of specific websites and social networks, or be it in the form of the usage of mobile phones to start public protests? This rather broad and nuanced question can only be addressed on a case-by-case basis, and only after a thorough empirical study can we fully substantiate the true impact of censorship and technologies role in promoting human rights.
If we take a step back from the theoretical meandering of various stratification of this issue and focus on the ‘on the ground impact’ of censorship on technology to curb human rights, we will find that there are more than few serious offenders. China, Myanmar, Cuba are some of the most consistent offender that have time and again tried to control its social and technology based media, from reporting, or even insinuating that any human rights violation is taking place, but even some democracies have gone the same route with the objective that censorship is needed to sustain stable governance. And at times this attitude has bordered on the cusp of censorship for the sake of censorship. This Kafka-esque attitude toward technology and its interwoven relationship with human rights, is quite prominent today in the Bangladeshi media. On may 29th Bangladeshi government officially blocked facebook, with no initial explanation. Upon some query from irritated users, an anonymous source from the government stated that one of the elite police forces asked the government to shut off access to the social networking site, because of “anti –government satire” and “anti-religious content”[1]. And it will remain so until the internet operators somehow find a way to block off contents that might be deemed to be ‘anti-religious’ ‘obscene’ or ‘anti-government’ by the government. This action was a direct response after an elite police force (RAB) apprehended Mr. Mahbub Alam Rodin (30) of Dhaka early Saturday and charged him with posting ‘offensive’ cartoons of government officials (including the Prime Minister) and making ‘derogatory’ comments about them on Facebook.
This sort of wholesale censorship points to two basic issues that plague all governments who are willing to curb the use of technology to stop what they view as anti-government and anti-religious propaganda. First and foremost, there’s a lack of understanding in terms of the impact of censorship, which by most accounts mythologizes censored material and thus make the censored issue more prominent that it was initially. Secondly, the ability to censor in a globalized world, is a losing battle in the long run. Governments that take offense to materials that they deem unfit, take offense under the basic assumption that their worldview is the one that trumps other worldviews. But since we do not live in a de-globalized world, such a worldview cannot sustain itself in theory and/or in practice. We have seen countless times that despite the best efforts by despots and democracies alike, censorship backfires. And in Bangladesh, which by most measure is a democratizing, and moderate Islamic nation, such practice of state censorship is not only an unwelcomed development, but also negates some of the progress made through mostly free and fair election last year. To censor a social networking site to stop government satire will only encourage people of principle to take up the issue on other websites. The whole fiasco with the Danish cartoon issue has taught us that protection of religious freedom should go hand in hand with protection of one’s right to disagree with that religious freedom within the framework of civil political discourse. And the sooner the Bangladeshi government accepts that it cannot control dissent or what it views as obscene, the better off Bangladesh as a whole would be. And those who argue that certain materials are anti-religious and offend their religious sentiments, should opt out of such social networking site that propagate ‘obscene’ materials, and leave it to the individuals to either follow suit or remain within that site. Freedom without the responsibility of tolerance, is equally if not more dangerous, than despotism itself.
[1] On Friday, three Islamic political parties–Islami Oikya Jote, Islami Andolan and Khelafat Andolan– demanded immediate ban on Facebook for a recent campaign by some users inviting people to draw images of the muslim Prophet Hazrat Muhammed.
© 2010, Jyoti chowdhury. All rights reserved.
