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Bangladesh police on Wednesday charged a reporter from a number one newspaper with producing “false information”, stoking fears about media freedom, after an article about excessive meals costs went viral.
Shamsuzzaman Shams was picked up from his residence within the industrial city of Savar simply exterior Dhaka at about 4am by plainclothes police, in keeping with his newspaper, Prothom Alo.
Rights teams say the Digital Safety Act beneath which Shams was charged has been broadly utilized by the federal government to muzzle journalists and critics.
The Prothom Alo article was printed on Sunday and included quotes from abnormal folks speaking about their lives on the event of Bangladesh’s independence day.
“What's the usage of this freedom if we will’t afford rice?” one labourer was quoted as saying.
The price of meals has soared in Bangladesh because the center of 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its foreign money, the taka, has fallen sharply towards the US greenback.
The house minister, Asaduzzaman Khan, confirmed that the reporter was questioned by police for a “false story” printed on the weekend.
“A case has been filed towards him,” the minister mentioned, including that Shams can be launched from custody however might be arrested once more over the costs.
The reporter was charged with “smearing the picture of the federal government with false information” and for elevating questions concerning the achievements of Bangladesh, beneath the Digital Safety Act, in keeping with a duplicate of the case file obtained by Agence France-Presse.
Based on an area thinktank, practically 3,000 folks have been charged beneath the Digital Safety Act because it was enacted in 2018, together with about 280 journalists.
This has stoked issues that beneath prime minister Sheikh Hasina, in energy since 2009, the south Asian nation of 170 million folks is changing into more and more authoritarian.
Reporters With out Borders ranked Bangladesh 162 of 180 international locations in its 2022 World Press Freedom Index. It's ranked beneath Russia (155) and Afghanistan (156).
In latest months, Bangladesh’s dwindling variety of impartial media and journalists have come beneath rising assault by the federal government and Hasina’s ruling occasion.
The authorities shut down the lone opposition mouthpiece in February, saying it violated the nation’s press legal guidelines.
At the least 10 journalists have been overwhelmed up by police whereas protecting a disputed election of supreme courtroom attorneys in Dhaka.
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