In the aftermath of Section 57

A case under Section 57 was filed against me last year. This was because of some comment made about a minister from a fake Facebook account. The Facebook account had been opened in my name with malicious intent. I had been writing about this fake account on my own Facebook long before this case was filed. In fact, I had even filed a GD with the local police station in this regard.

The reason of the case was the son of the minister. He is also a local leader in the minister’s constituency. A few days before the case was filed against me, the minister on a TV talk show had spoken about taking action against me. Before and after the case, the host of that TV talk show as well as the host of Trittiyo Matra, Zillur Rahman, had told the minister that the Facebook account wasn’t actually mine. I myself sent the minister a detailed text message over mobile phone about the matter. And yet he went ahead with the case, first under defamation charges and later under Section 57.

The police can arrest anyone the moment a case is filed against him or her under Section 57. When I heard about the case, I was anxious about my children. I am the one who drops my children to school and brings them home every day. If I was arrested, how would they go to school? What about the other work at home? My wife is busy the whole day with her consultancy work and only returns home in the evening. How will she manage on her own if I’m arrested? What about my students?

My family was utterly distressed. My wife rushed home the moment she heard the news and ran from lawyer to court. My eleven-year-old girl wanted to know, “What did you do?” I answered, “I didn’t do anything, dear.” She was bewildered, “Then why will they arrest you?”  What was there to say?

I am a professor of law at Dhaka University. I have been lecturing at home and abroad about the rule of law for the past two decades or so. Top lawyers of the country fought the case for me for free. If I was in such a fix, what about the predicament of the deprived common people if they had to face Section 57? If they are arrested and sent to jail, who will look after their families?

There have been about 700 cases in this country filed under Section 57. A member of parliament had distributed goats and one of them died the next day. A man was arrested for publishing a photograph of this. An ailing journalist was dragged to the police station simply because he expressed his fear of being harassed by a minister’s hoodlums. An old man was arrested for reporting about certain irregularities. There are innumerable such examples.

Police themselves have filed charges under Section 57 after searching Facebook for comments against extremely powerful persons. If the sycophants of a very powerful person feel that person has been defamed in anyway, they can file a case and arrests are made. The leader of an organisation named Jananetri Parishad himself issued a statement in the newspapers, saying that he had filed a defamation case against Khaleda Zia and other leaders of the opposition so as to draw the prime minister’s attention and also in hope of getting a job. Even though this news was published prominently in the media, the court still accepted the case he filed under Section 57.

So many cases have been filed under Section 57, but no one dares to file cases against people of the government ilk who make defamatory statements on the electronic media. Almost all the cases under Section 57 are against others, some simply for the sake of harassment and invoking alarm.

The Indian Supreme Court in 2015 abolished a law similar to Section 57, terming it as unconstitutional. A case had been filed with our Supreme Court against Section 57 of the ICT act. The government held the case up by simply saying that this would soon be abolished. Since then, year after year Section 57 has been used to harass one person after the other. The Supreme Court in some instances saved some of the persons who faced such charges by granting anticipatory bail. But it did not abolish the act as the government itself had said that it may abolish this section.

Section 57 was not abolished. It has now be firmly re-established. Section 57 was divided into several sections (25, 28, 29, 31) of the Digital Security Act which was passed by the parliament on Wednesday. When this was first done in the draft of the law, journalists, human rights activists, foreign diplomats and others expressed their concern about this. The government held meetings with them and assured them that their concerns would be taken into consideration. But finally Section 57 was included in the new digital security act almost the same entirely as before, just with the use of a few changed words, somewhat fragmented and with the sentences slightly shortened in certain instance.

As in Section 57, in the new digital security act too, several of the crimes remain unclear. For example, in the new digital act, making any statement in the electronic media against the spirit of the liberation war is a serious crime. Yet according to the definition of the spirit of the liberation war given in this act, the act itself goes against the spirit of the liberation war. The law prevents freedom of speech. That was not the objective of the liberation war.

It is also a crime in the new act to create deterioration in law and order by means of any statement in the electronic media. For example, if the opposition posts a message on Facebook calling people to stand up against a ruling party person who is using his armed cadres to spread terror before the elections. It is in the spirit of the liberation war to stand up against such underhand means in the election, but under the digital security act, the police may deem this as causing deterioration in law and order.

The digital security act also allows the police to conduct arrests and searches without warrant simply on the basis of suspicion. In recent times we have seen Bangladesh Chhatra League involved in violence in front of the police, but the police did not arrest them. On the contrary, they arrested the victims. If these police get such powers particularly before the election, what will they do? Those who are corrupt within the police force can use this act to harass people in all sorts of ways.

Another aspect of the new digital act is to block investigative journalism. Section 32 deals with the official secrets act where anyone can be punished if they violate the clauses through the electronic media. The various clauses of the official secrets act keep government offices under state secrecy. The digital security act in some cases is more stringent than the official secrets act. For example, in Section 3A of the official secrets act, the highest sentence is three years’ jail, but in the digital act, the highest maximum sentence is 14 years imprisonment and/or a Tk 2.5 million fine.

I have no doubt that the objective of this digital security act is to file charges against critics of the government’s misdeeds or against people with differing views, or too keep them in fear. The entire country will be kept under control in this manner.

Various forums dealing with rights, as well as the Supreme Court, must immediately stand up against this law.

* Asif Nazrul is a professor of the law department at Dhaka University. This piece has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir.