Mainstream media faces challenges in developed democracies like never before. On one hand, seemingly “free” digital (including social media) options are eroding the market for print drastically. Ads are not so much shifting from print to digital, but apparently simply disappearing. In the face of the pressures stemming from changing economics of the news business—which still has to be gathered at great expense, even if it can be distributed or shared by third parties practically for free (denying the gatherers their share of revenue)—one now encounters a new form of threat that is more political and cultural, namely, “fake news” and state and nonstate actors who wield it to undermine the public's trust in traditional media or news sources.
Fake news and the related phenomenon of social media, and how they influence how one consumes news and forms opinions, have rightly gained a special urgency in more developed markets as a crisis point for media. As it happens though, the perspective from a country like Bangladesh is quite different. More traditional forms of control by the state and/or government currently make fake news less important as a tool. So, even as one cannot be sanguine about this phenomenon, and though it is does exist in Bangladesh, how it fits into the current scenario of media control is worth exploring.
While government-backed fake news has understandably garnered a great deal of attention recently, it is just one of many tools used by governments to control media narratives, and in many ways it is not a novel phenomenon. Government-backed propaganda disseminated through mass media started being used effectively during World War I in Western countries and has been employed by a variety of states ever since (Casey Reference Casey1944). It is possible for nongovernment interest groups also to propagate fake news, but it can take on a magnitude with the full backing of government agents, namely intelligence outfits, that is not easy for private quarters to match.
The second element, a modern creation, comes mostly from the widespread, Silicon Valley techno-optimistic view that the Internet would automatically result in a free and open global society that would essentially make governmental control of information near impossible. This has been shown to be a rather naïve notion, as no tool has a moral agenda in itself (as Rabelais wrote, “science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l’âme”). Hence, this tool can be wielded by any actor: citizens, corporations, and governments alike. China's successful “fire wall” and the US National Security Agency's invasive surveillance of US citizens are but two examples of how this tool can be contained or used by governments and not necessarily for the good of their societies. Fake news, as a method of misinformation, is designed to drown out or “muddy the waters” rather than silence in the way censorship might. While it can be considered a softer form of attack—distributed, misdirecting, and often incohesive—it is still pernicious, as its mere existence casts doubt on the legitimacy of all media.
This may thus be the first interesting contrast between censorship or suppression and fake news: whereas outright suppression of media often leads to enhancing its credibility, even if it is muffled in the short run, fake news—when deployed extensively enough, and when it jibes strongly enough with preexisting prejudices of societal or political factions—can bring mainstream media as a whole into question. It is a new enough phenomenon that no one can be certain as to either the durability of its effect or the ways of mitigating them. But there is little doubt that mainstream media—from print to television to online and digital—is facing a crisis of credibility that is possibly unprecedented in well-formed democracies (Calvo-Porral, Martínez-Fernández, and Juanatey-Boga Reference Calvo-Porral, Martínez-Fernández and Juanatey-Boga2014).
This legitimacy issue has been wielded most famously and recently by the current American president Donald Trump; it has been leveraged to great effect by him both during his campaign and now as a complement to his governing style. Using widespread public knowledge of the concept of fake news—along with a concomitant erosion of trust in traditional holders of knowledge, such as scientists and teachers—individuals seeking answers have gravitated to knowledge groupings often based on narrow political or social interests. And by using their position of authority to discredit legitimate news sources, government officials attempt to make themselves the only credible news source. Again, while this is a rather new method of controlling discourse, it hardly bears mentioning that the tension between official government narratives and media narratives is not a new phenomenon.
In the Bangladesh context, the use of fake news is not as prevalent, mainly because neither the government nor the populace has the technological finesse of many other countries. Bangladeshi governmental attempts to control the news narrative, however, have become bolder in recent years as the ruling Awami League has solidified its overwhelming majority in the Parliament and decimated the main opposition party. Interestingly enough, in Bangladesh, the “fake news” tool has been used more effectively by the religious parties to stoke communal tensions and disseminate fundamentalist propaganda (Ganapathy Reference Ganapathy2017).
The most glaring instance of such use of fake news in Bangladesh occurred when media aligned with the out-of-power Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its long-term fundamentalist ally the Jamaat-e-Islami to successfully brand all free-thinking or secular bloggers as “atheists” (E. Hossain Reference Hossain2013). Young Bangladeshi bloggers had spearheaded a movement to ensure justice for the convicted perpetrators of the genocide committed during the country's 1971 Liberation War. At its peak, in February 2015, a spontaneous movement drew crowds that exceeded 100,000 repeatedly, especially on weekends. Since many of the convicted were also leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a party that had collaborated with the genocidal Pakistani army in 1971, Jamaat (and its partner the Bangladesh Nationalist Party or BNP) needed to discredit the movement. Stories that ran in the Bangla-language newspapers Amar Desh and Naya Diganta (Daily Star 2013), as well as on numerous blogs and Facebook pages run by Jamaat activists, were able to use a few comments critical of religion by some bloggers to paint the entire movement as an atheistic one.Footnote 1 Free speech, especially where religious sensitivity is concerned, suffered a deep blow from that sweeping attribution, and is still far from recovering, as the government too adopted a path of appeasement and passed new “Digital Laws” that penalize blasphemy (Human Rights Watch 2018).
In the wider context of free media versus government control, fake news is just one of the more visible tools to silence or really drown out legitimate media. Crucially, fake news does not come out of a vacuum. It comes out of contexts like Russia, where tight government control of media, censorship, intimidation, and even murder of journalists are common currency (Kovalev Reference Kovalev2017). A government that has invested heavily in developing the tools and skills both to control and censor mainstream and social media and to populate them with “news” of one's preference can make a kind of impact that neither nonstate actors nor states without similar sway or resources can easily make. As mounting evidence of Russian contributions to swing the Brexit vote and the last US presidential elections comes forth, the magnitude of the impact of organized, state-driven interference via social media—and with fake news as a major component—is becoming apparent, and still being digested and understood as a new kind of phenomenon in propaganda and “hybrid warfare” (Lardner Reference Lardner2017; Lomas Reference Lomas2017; McKew Reference McKew2018).
A novelty of fake news that thus emerges is the ironic unevenness of exposure faced by open-versus-closed societies: thanks to free speech policies of open societies, even patently false or harmful news or opinions cannot be easily shut down. By contrast, closed societies and their often concomitantly authoritarian governments are far more able to obstruct public access to news—real or fake—or suppress the real news in favor of fake news preferred by the regime.
Unfortunately, government-sponsored fake news is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the broader struggle for a free and open press. What its existence reveals is a global media landscape in crisis. Over the past decade, freedom of the press has been under assault worldwide with global average freedom of the press in alarming decline, according to organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Freedom House (2017). By laying the groundwork for mainstream media constraints through measures like censorship and restrictive legislation, states make more space to create focused and well-funded attempts at government misinformation and propaganda. While government-pushed fake news of this variety does not exist yet in Bangladesh—at least not on any large, organized scale—it is crucial to focus on traditional freedom of the press issues there, as its media landscape has recently deteriorated in tandem with global trends (Butler Reference Butler2018).
Historical Background
The media in Bangladesh and the historical region of Bengal have a rich legacy of clashing with political and religious authorities. The first Bangla-language newspapers were published in the early nineteenth century (Yusuf Reference Yusuf2015). Very quickly, the Bangla-language press became an outlet not only to express discontent with the British colonial order and the economic iniquities of a system dominated by a small land-owning elite (zamindars), but also for conservative religious voices against social and religious reforms (Chaudburi Reference Chaudburi1955).
This unruly press scene soon attracted the attention of British authorities. Starting in 1823, they enacted a series of increasingly restrictive ordinances designed to better control the press and to suppress dissenting and critical voices. These ordinances started with the requirement for newspapers to be registered with government authorities, and sought to increasingly tighten governmental control throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 1878, the British issued the infamous Vernacular Press Act. Among other things, under this act, publication of materials in non-English languages deemed to encourage “disaffection” against the government and certain religions and castes was punishable with the closure of the newspaper and arrest of the publisher (Mondal, Reference Mondaln.d.). Additional restrictive ordinances were passed in the first half of the twentieth century in an attempt to bolster British authority and forestall the independence movement. Despite these restrictions, a vibrant press emerged in the region, often flouting these regulations and clashing with colonial authorities. The early twentieth century also saw the beginning of publications aligned with political parties, such as Congress, the Muslim League, and the Communist Party, whose editorial slants were often anti-colonial.
With partition, East Bengal fell under the authority of Pakistan and became known as East Pakistan. This period saw the attempted imposition of Urdu as the national language and the politicization of the Bangla language. The killing, on February 21, 1952, of protestors agitating for Bangla as one of the national languages of a unified Pakistan, was a pivotal event in modern Bangladeshi history. It is viewed as a major impetus that drove Bangladesh's independence movement; it also underscored Bangla's role as a symbol of resistance to Pakistani authorities and of a distinct Bangladeshi identity. To this day, February 21 is deeply etched in Bangladeshis’ consciousness and is observed nationwide with somber ceremonies, book fairs, and other cultural events. The widespread celebration of what is now recognized as International Mother Language Day by the United Nations underscores how deeply intertwined language and politics are in Bangladesh.
In 1952, local newspapers were critical of the killings despite surveillance, tight censorship laws, and the risk of arrest. Following this incident, Pakistan tried creating its own fake news publications while attempting to stifle the free media with legislation modeled on the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 (Yusuf Reference Yusuf2015). During the 1971 War of Independence, major independent Bangla publications were shut down. One of the only newspapers to keep publishing was the Daily Sangram, Jamaat-e-Islami's newspaper. Ironically, the militant Islamist organization's publication documented self-incriminating information on its role as a collaborator in atrocities that occurred during that period (Yusuf Reference Yusuf2015). Until fairly recently, the Islamists’ roles as war criminals and collaborators severely tarnished their reputation and largely sidelined them in the public discourse.
With independence in 1971, Bangladesh acquired a new, secular constitution that guaranteed freedom of the press with some “reasonable restrictions.” National security legislation and sedition and criminal libel laws comprise the boundaries within which the press can operate (Freedom House 2016). However, when applied, some of these laws can create a very hostile environment for journalists. For instance, under the 1974 Special Powers Act, journalists can be detained up to 120 days without trial or bail (Wikipedia 2018). These laws have been used with varying vigor and subjectivity, depending on who has been in power.
The Media Landscape in Bangladesh Today
In many ways, today's media landscape in Bangladesh is a reflection of the country's past. While the specific actors have changed, the dynamics present during the media's turbulent early years are still at play. There are state authorities, with a largely adversarial stance toward a free and critical media, a varied media reflecting different political persuasions, and reactionary groups intent on imposing their vision of religious doctrine and social order.
As was the case from the early twentieth century onward, much of the media is aligned with certain political parties, though the main parties now are the currently ruling Awami League (AL) and the BNP. The press's polarized political allegiances have even resulted in two separate journalist unions (Adnan Reference Adnan2018). One important distinction today is that media houses with the largest audiences are owned by big business conglomerates with a variety of commercial interests in addition to certain political leanings.Footnote 2 On the one hand, it means organizations behind news outlets have more resources to deal with a variety of challenges; on the other, it also means that they have much more to lose if they attract the ire of the government.
There are hundreds of print publications in circulation, dozens of television and radio channels, as well as many online news sources and bloggers. The government frequently cites the inception of a great many of the newer outfits since it came to power in 2009 (and was reelected in controversial polls in 2014) as evidence of media freedom during its tenure. However, this active and wide variety of news outlets masks a troubling trend. Over the past few years, the working conditions for journalists in Bangladesh have deteriorated significantly.
Political Context
The post-1971 political landscape has been dominated by the aforementioned Awami League and BNP. Contrary to most Western conceptions of political parties, the Awami League and BNP have been the vehicles for the political ambitions of two competing political dynasties. Sheikh Hasina, the sitting prime minister and head of the Awami league, is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is widely considered the “father of the nation” for having led the independence struggle against Pakistan and was the country's first head of state. He was killed in a military coup in August 1975 along with almost all of his extended family members, except for Sheikh Hasina and her sister, who were abroad. Khaleda Zia, the head of the opposition BNP, is the wife of General Ziaur Rahman, who became the country's chief of army staff following the 1975 coup, and then became head of state in 1977. He was later assassinated in 1981 in another military coup.
Despite two families wielding unchallenged power at the helms of the two leading parties, the parties do not merely serve as vehicles for their personal ambitions. The two parties also harbor and seek to realize or maintain two competing visions of Bangladesh. Awami League, which led the country's independence movement, is imbued with a notion of Bengali nationalism that has its roots in the cultural and political struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s and in a harshly hegemonic context of (West) Pakistani rule. This is a vision that was secular at the outset and took immense pride in the country's language-based cultural identity. By contrast, the BNP found a partner in the Jamaat-e-Islami almost at inception, and these two parties together have fostered a vision of Bangladesh that seeks to establish religion, namely Islam—the faith practiced by almost 90 percent of the population—as the cornerstone of Bangladeshi nationalism.
As it happens, a number of factors—including petro-dollar-funded Wahhabi mosques and madrassahs since the 1980s, remittance earners from the Middle East who send back more conservative values along with their earnings, and a new efflorescence of Islamic identity fueled by social media that has swept many Muslim-majority societies—have rendered the landscape favorable for the kind of nationalism preached by BNP and Jamaat. In this context, the Awami League too has taken on an ever-softer interpretation towards what it means to be secular.
Since 1991 and the end of the military regimes, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina have alternated at the helm of the country—and the contest has always been tense, at times violent. There is a long history of rival supporters of the parties clashing in street protests, resulting in deaths and countless injuries (Asia Foundation 2017), and of legal harassment of opposition members. The 1970s and early ‘80s witnessed assassinations arising out of both violently radical leftist politics and from military coups d’état. With the advent of democracy in 1991, one hoped for a new beginning; much of the ‘90s was free from assassinations and, in hindsight, even the hard-knuckled tactics were less intense or unrelenting than during military dictatorships—or in a future that was then still optimistic.
The political environment of Bangladesh took a decisive turn for the worse with the post-electoral violence in 2001. It was the first year that an incumbent—the Awami League—had peacefully handed over power to the opposition—a BNP and Jamaat alliance—after free and fair elections. But rather than continue that diplomacy, BNP-Jamaat opened a campaign of violence against AL grassroots supporters and Hindu minorities across the country. During their tenure (2001–6), there was a rise in local Islamist terrorist groups (Ahsan and Banavar Reference Ahsan, Banavar, Riaz and Fair2010, 75), and a spate of deadly attacks on senior AL party leaders such as the former finance minister of AL, Shah A. M. S. Kibria. On August 21, 2004, BNP-Jamaat-backed terrorists attempted to assassinate then-opposition leader Sheikh Hasina. The attack killed dozens of top AL party members and injured over 200 people (Daily Star 2015).
Years later, when out of power, BNP-Jamaat carried out campaigns of violence that targeted civilians by petrol-bombing commuter buses in 2013 and again in 2015. Those attacks left several hundred dead and almost 5,000 with burn injuries. Once again, while clashes between police-and-cadre or cadre-and-cadre were a known phenomenon, the targeting of civilians was unprecedented.
The rise of this kind of political violence has had a devastating effect on the fundamental trust that is key to any democratic order: a belief that certain lines—targeted violence against political rivals or civilians—will not be crossed. In this context, Awami League, upon returning to power, has worked to solidify its hold on power by using both judicial and allegedly extra-judicial means against BNP-Jamaat, and, increasingly, against anyone perceived as hostile to its rule. While the AL did not invent extra-judicial measures, its continuing use of these measures has left the hopes of a rights-based culture in tatters.
The bitter and violent nature of Bangladesh's politics has thus had a direct impact on the media and the environment within which it must operate.
Governmental Pressures on the Media
Judicial Harassment
Given the “winner takes all” mentality that drives the Awami League-BNP rivalry, and the widespread use of violence to achieve political goals, Bangladeshi journalists have always been vulnerable. However, since taking office in January 2009, the Awami League has been able to consolidate its grip on power in an unprecedented manner in Bangladesh's modern political era. Aided by the BNP's own blunders, it has used state resources to not only pummel it into a state nearly of irrelevance but also to harass, arrest, torture, and silence critical media voices.
Perhaps the most infamous legal tool used to harass journalists is Article 57 of the 2006 Information and Communications Act. Under this law, with echoes of the 1878 Vernacular Press Act, anyone who publishes material online considered to tarnish the state, disrupt public law and order, be defamatory against an individual, or harm religious sentiments can face up to ten years in jail and a maximum fine per offense of BDT 1 crore (approximately USD 125,000).
This law has been used and widely abused to harass journalists. In some cases, even stories that could hardly be construed as critical of the government have elicited its use. One particularly absurd example involves a journalist who reported the death of a goat donated in July 2017 by the Minister of State for Fisheries and Livestock to a villager in Dumaria, roughly 200 kilometers outside of Dhaka. When local journalist Abdul Latif Morol reported that one of the goats that had been donated died shortly after, a complaint was filed against him by a journalist at another, Awami League-aligned, newspaper for defaming the minister. Morol was subsequently arrested and jailed for a day until he was released on bail. He still faces charges (Committee to Protect Journalists 2017).
As of February 2018, Mahfuz Anam, editor the major English-language newspaper The Daily Star, and one of the editors who published controversial, unverified intelligence reports, said he was facing no less than eighty-four charges for defamation and sedition and is potentially personally liable for an eye-popping USD 8 billion in fines (Butler Reference Butler2018).
While the exact numbers of cases are difficult to come by, The Daily Star reported that twenty-one journalists faced legal charges under Article 57 between March and July 2017 alone (Adhikary Reference Adhikary2017). It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of these cases are frivolous and are a form of harassment and intimidation. In fact, the Dhaka Tribune reports that roughly two-thirds of cases brought to the Cyber Tribunal in Dhaka have no merit and are dismissed outright (Shaon Reference Shaon2017).
Article 57 and its application have come under substantial and justified criticism, and the government is currently working on replacing it. Unfortunately, the newly proposed Digital Security Act is decidedly a step in the wrong direction and has been met with widespread condemnation. It retains all the problematic provisions of Article 57 while making certain offenses not subject to bail, and punishable by even longer prison sentences and larger fines. Worryingly, it also adds to the list of offenses insulting Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the 1971 Liberation War or its “spirit” (Dhaka Tribune 2018).
Another form of legal pressure exerted by the government is the wholesale shutdown of media publications and television stations that air content it judges improper. While this happens less frequently, several television channels and newspapers have been shut down for varying lengths of time in the past few years (Chowdhury Reference Chowdhury2014). The government also can block access to certain news websites. In 2016, the government blocked access to thirty-five news websites, including numerous BNP-aligned publications (Reporters Without Borders 2016). In this instance, the government hardly bothered to even state a legal reasoning for the action. Nor is the blocking of sites restricted to Bangladeshi ones. The government blocked access to the Indian website The Wire in November 2017, after it ran a report on the brief disappearance of an academic working on counter-terrorism issues (Quint 2017). It has also occasionally shut down social networking sites like Facebook and messaging apps like WhatsApp for national security reasons, as it did after Jamaat-e-Islami members’ death penalties for 1971 war crimes were upheld in 2015 (BBC 2015).
Government Extrajudicial Harassment
Successive governments in Bangladesh over the past decades have often used extrajudicial means to further their goals. In a country where the criminal justice system is woefully underfunded, inefficient, and prone to corruption, governments have often gone around it to further their ends. The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism police unit founded in 2004, has been the preferred tool to carry out extrajudicial attacks. These are often used to pursue suspected criminals and terrorists. Their actions routinely result in killings euphemistically referred to as “crossfire incidents.” In a recent drug crackdown on the methamphetamine drug trade crossing the border from Myanmar, dozens of reportedly extrajudicial killings have been carried out by security forces between mid-May and mid-June 2018. The encounters stand at an average of twenty per month from January through April 2018 (Emont and Rashid Reference Emont and Rashid2018).
In a context where government-sanctioned vigilante justice is routinely carried out, suspected terrorists and drug dealers are not the only victims. Political opposition members and independent journalists are also targeted. Indeed, extrajudicial pressure is one of the most feared tools used by the government. Here, the actions taken by the government range from surveillance to torture. Several journalists have reported suspected surveillance, and, when arrested, several have been asked to hand over Internet passwords (Freedom House 2016). It appears that the state security apparatus is working on expanding its digital surveillance capacities. It was reported that in 2015 RAB attempted to purchase mobile surveillance technology from Swiss company Neosoft. The purchase was suspended due to Swiss concerns that the systems could be used to commit human rights violations (Freedom House 2016).
Another form of harassment journalists frequently report receiving is intimidating “advisory” phone calls. These can come from the police, intelligence agencies, or politicians. Journalists will often face a variety of threats if they do not modify or stop covering given news items (Butler Reference Butler2018).
Journalists also face violence when reporting in the field. Nazmul Huda, a reporter for Ekushey TV, says he was tortured by police officers for several days for reporting on a garment workers’ strike in December 2016. Only after confessing under torture that he had participated in instigating the strike, among other things, was he sent before a judge to face six criminal charges. He was then jailed for forty-five days before being granted bail (Butler Reference Butler2018).
The last form of extrajudicial threat faced by journalists is enforced disappearance. It is nearly impossible to prove who abducts people in this manner, and the government always denies responsibility. However, in a secret recording in 2017, a senior RAB official admitted to conducting enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings (Human Rights Watch 2017). In 2016, media and human rights organizations recorded ninety such disappearances, of which twenty-one were killed and most of the remainder have reappeared (Human Rights Watch 2017). Most of the targets of such practices are suspected criminals, terrorists, and, increasingly, members of the opposition. However, journalists are not spared. Utpal Das, a journalist who had written stories about the armed forces, disappeared for several months in 2017, before reappearing seemingly unharmed but unwilling to discuss his confinement (Mahmud Reference Mahmud2018). While it is not certain who perpetrated this crime and their motivation, the common nature of enforced disappearances, and the fact that they are committed with complete impunity, adds substantially to the climate of fear under which journalists work.
The Islamist Threat
One of the most disturbing developments for journalists recently has been violence perpetrated by Islamist extremists. As mentioned earlier, Islamists were initially sidelined for their role in the 1971 war. However, there was always a certain line that could not be crossed without fear of violent retaliation. As early as 1973, poet Daud Haider was attacked by a religious mob and sent into exile for a poem that offended Islamists. More famously, author Tasleema Nasrin was also threatened and forced into exile in 1994 for her writings. In 2004, professor and author Humayun Azad suffered a knife and machete attack at the hands of three Islamic extremists. While he survived the attack, this was not to be the last of such gruesome attacks.
The ideals of the 1971 Liberation War were democratic and secular. However, in this 90 percent Muslim country, the threat of Islamist violence or Islamists’ influence on society never truly disappeared. Starting with their first post-1971 protest against Daud Haider in 1973, Islamists, mainly under the political banner of Jamaat-e-Islami, have grown increasingly assertive and coercive (Mohaiemen Reference Mohaiemen2013). The true rehabilitation of Islamists into public life started with the rise of General Ziaur Rahman to power. In 1977, he struck Article 12 from the constitution, which proclaimed secularism as a fundamental state principle, and inserted Muslim professions of faith into the constitution instead. He also added compulsory Islamic studies to school curricula. These changes were cemented by his successor General Ershad, who declared Islam as the state religion (Lal Reference Lal2010, 23). In 1991. Jamaat-e-Islami reentered the political landscape as part of a coalition with Khaleda Zia's BNP, and again as part of the 2001 BNP-led government. While it never garnered more than eighteen parliamentary seats (out of three hundred), the return of Jamaat to mainstream politics signaled a new era of respectability for the outfit and for its regressive ideas of what constitute proper behavior and social norms.
During these decades, large networks of religious schools (madrassas) emerged, largely funded by Gulf countries. These filled a much-needed education gap, but pushed Wahhabi-inspired ideals and contributed to creating an increasingly conservative subculture. As recently as 2017, Saudi Arabia pledged over USD 1 billion to build several hundred “model mosques” and provide education to 150,000 children. There are now 300,000 privately funded mosques in the country and growing, and 1.4 million students being taught in private religious schools without any government oversight (Economist 2017). Fundamentally, these institutions seek to replace Bengali with Islam as the key marker for Bangladeshi identity, and equate “secularism” with “un-Islamic” in the public discourse (Al Lawati Reference Al Lawati2010). They have been successful enough at both of these that politicians have become increasingly unwilling to challenge them.
In May 2013, when a large Islamist protest took place in Dhaka to demand the execution of “atheist” bloggers, the government refused to defend the bloggers, and instead brought charges against them for “offending religious sentiment” under Article 57. Several of the bloggers named as “atheist” and/or “blasphemous” were subsequently murdered by machete-wielding assailants (Economist 2017). The government's initial tepid response to the murders, which consisted mostly of victim-blaming, sent a chill throughout the blogosphere and the publishing community. Unsurprisingly, there has been a complete halt to the publication of books critical of religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh since then, and many secular-minded bloggers have gone into hiding or exile (Hussain Reference Hussain2017).
Moreover, by creating and spreading fake news reports of desecration of the Qu'ran or other “blasphemous” actions on social media, the Islamists have been able to stoke communal tensions within the country, often against minority Hindus, Christians, and tribal groups. For example, in 2012, Buddhist minorities in Ramu—a subdistrict in southeastern Bangladesh—faced vicious assaults at the hands of a mob whipped up by fake news. A Photoshopped Facebook post containing images of a burning Qu'ran tagged to a Buddhist youth named Uttam Kumar Barua was circulated and led to the public outburst. The profile that tagged him used a pseudonym. Twelve Buddhist temples and fifty houses were burned down by the angry mob. Similar kinds of attacks have taken place in Rangpur, Brahmanbaria, Cumilla, and Pabna district, where whipped-up mobs attacked local Hindu communities while police often stood by (Minar and Naher, Reference Minar and Naherforthcoming).
Alarmingly, the threats, attempted murders, and actual murders continue unabated and target an ever-widening circle of individuals, from journalists to gay rights activists to non-Sunni Muslims. Relative to the government's attitude of “zero-tolerance” towards more conventional forms of terrorism—indiscriminate killing of civilians to create a sense of siege and fear—the threats towards free-thinking intellectuals or adherents of faiths or lifestyles anathema to the most hardened fundamentalists gets a mixed response from the government. Condemnation of such threats and attacks is rarely unequivocal; calls for unorthodox practitioners to hew closer to prevailing social norms remains a familiar refrain. This passivity in the face of attacks on free-thinking intellectuals and independent (and especially, critical) journalists has led to a sense of heightened vulnerability for these groups. At this time, Bangladesh has been ranked by the CPJ as the tenth worst country in the world for prosecution of murdered journalists (Witchel Reference Witchel2017).
Conclusion
The double threat of government harassment and unpunished Islamist violence has created a climate of intense fear and self-censorship in all forms of media. In light of all these issues, in 2016, Freedom House downgraded Bangladesh's Freedom of the Press ranking from “partly free” to “not free” (Freedom House 2016). Under such intense pressure, there is not much the Bangladeshi press corps can do to push back without putting themselves at great risk. Under these circumstances, with civil society too under some pressure and unable to challenge either the government or Islamists, vital bulwarks of democratic and secular values in Bangladesh are now facing a worrying level of corrosion.
Finally, while fake news has become a serious concern in the United States and other developed democracies, that may be partly because those societies still boast robust cultures of rights and systems of justice that ensure physical safety and freedom from gross forms of harassment. But in places where more direct forms of control are not only still possible but on the rise, there is little need for something as sophisticated and indirect as fake news to sway public opinion by way of advancing one's agenda or interests. In time, this may change, especially if the deployment of fake news can become easier to wield as a targeted and scalable operation. But in a tool kit with far more brutal instruments that can be used with virtual impunity, fake news may continue to be a supplementary option for now.
