Bangladesh Enacts Digital Security Act Amid Media Protests

Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid on Monday gave his assent to a controversial new law that media groups fear could cripple press freedom and curb free speech in the South Asian nation.

Parliament passed the Digital Security Act on September 19, combining the colonial-era Official Secrets Act with tough new provisions such as arrests without a warrant.

"The president has given his assent to the Digital Security Act today, making it law," his press secretary, Joynal Abedin, told Reuters.

Last month, media groups cancelled protests against the law after the government promised to amend it. But their concerns were not addressed, said Manzurul Ahsan Bulbul, a former president of the Bangladesh Federal Journalist Union who took part in talks with the government.

"We are frustrated as, during the meeting, we placed several proposals but none was reflected in the law," he told Reuters. "Now we will see what the cabinet decides and accordingly will take action."

Abedin said the government could only consider amending the measure after it became law.

"The law can be amended at any time if cabinet desires, so the journalist community need not to be worried," Anisul Haq, the law minister, told Reuters.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has called the law a "tool ripe for abuse and a clear violation of the country's obligations under international law to protect free speech".

Opponents say the digital law is the latest authoritarian move by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, criticised for suppressing student protests in August and a war on drugs that has prompted accusations of extrajudicial killings by security forces, a charge the government denies.

Hasina has defended the digital law as necessary to combat cyber crime.

"The journalists are only thinking about their interest, not about society and only for that they are raising their voices," Hasina said this week.

Scores of people, including journalists, have been jailed for online criticism of the government since Hasina returned to power in 2009.

The law has also drawn opposition internationally.

The US ambassador to Bangladesh, Marcia Bernicat, said last month the "Digital Security Act could be used to suppress and criminalise free speech, all to the detriment of Bangladesh's democracy, development and prosperity."