Visits to the refugee camps show that degrading cell service is harming the Rohingyas’ capacity to get access to vital information, express themselves freely, and otherwise exercise their fundamental human rights.…
2 October 2019
Bangladesh’s Parliament passed the new Digital Security Act with the intention of ensuring national digital security and preventing and prosecuting digital offenses, but in practice it poses significant threats to free expression.…
21 September 2018
Students have taken to the streets in protest, and authorities have reportedly arrested a number of activists and journalists covering the protests online — a major breach of freedom of expression in the region.…
10 August 2018
Yesterday, authorities in Dhaka, Bangladesh shut down some internet services for several hours, including blocking access to Facebook, Whatsapp, and Viber. Service was later restored, but key services remain offline. The latest shutdown in Dhaka shows worrying backsliding to the use of internet shutdowns as a blunt instrument to deal with threats to national security. It also solidifies the South Asia region as a hub for these intentional disruptions, given that Pakistan and the Indian provinces of Gujarat and Kashmir have also chosen to disrupt networks in the past few months. Worse, it looks as though lawmakers around the world are seeing threats to national security as a justification for undermining the open internet. …
19 November 2015