DHAKA, Bangladesh – A Bangladeshi writer who has been detained for nearly a year for social media posts criticizing the country’s government died in prison, officials and family members said on Friday, raising alarm over the country’s crackdown on dissidents.
The writer, Mushtaq Ahmed, was among 11 people accused earlier this year of spreading social media content, including cartoons, which alleged mismanagement and corruption in Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s response to the pandemic.
His case was brought under the Bangladesh Digital Security Act, a 2018 law that gives the government broad powers to search, fine and arrest anyone who violates its vague principles, including violating “solidarity, financial activities, security, defense , public discipline religious values of the country. “
Critics say it was used to suppress dissent. The Asia Human Rights Commission said it documented the arrest of 138 people last year – journalists, students and political activists – for criticizing Hasina’s government.
Mr. Ahmed was detained at the high-security prison in Kashimpur and was denied bail six times.
Human rights organizations demanded an investigation into his death and called for the repeal of the Digital Security Law, which also includes measures to protect against cybercrime and attacks.
Mohammad Gias Uddin, the senior superintendent of the prison where Ahmed was held, said the writer had lost consciousness on Thursday night and was taken to the prison hospital. Later, prison guards took him to a larger medical center in the nearby city of Gazipur, but he was pronounced dead on arrival, said Uddin.
Prison doctors reported that Ahmed “never complained about his health problems,” said Uddin of the 54-year-old writer. “He used to take pills for stomach and headache.”
Nafeesur Rahman, Ahmed’s cousin who is also a doctor, said he was present during the autopsy.
“I didn’t find any marks of injury anywhere on his body,” said Rahman, adding that Ahmed’s heart was enlarged and his blood pressure was very low when he lost consciousness.
The police complaint against Ahmed and the other 10 accused them of spreading misinformation and rumors about the coronavirus and damaging the government’s image, sowing confusion on social networks. The accusations had a nationalist tone, accusing them of “posting rumors against the Father of the Nation, the war of independence”.
In one of his latest Facebook posts before his arrest before dawn last May by elite forces, Ahmed compared the country’s health minister to a cockroach. In another, he wrote: “When a society regrets the loss of an economy more than the loss of human life, it does not need a virus, it is already sick”.
Aliya Iftikhar, senior researcher in Asia at the Committee to Protect Journalists, called his death “a devastating and unscrupulous loss”.
Mizanur Rahman, a professor of law at the University of Dhaka and former chairman of the Bangladesh National Human Rights Commission, said the Digital Security Act is being used to reduce freedom of expression in the country.
“We all have to understand that criticizing the government is not a seditious offense,” said Rahman. “Mushtaq Ahmed was not found guilty – he was in prison for nine months just on charges of criticizing the government, and his death in prison is totally unacceptable.”
Bangladesh, one of the most populous countries in the world, which also has poor health infrastructure, will always be vulnerable to the coronavirus. Concerns about the pandemic have been compounded by accusations of profound corruption in the increasingly authoritarian government of a country that has been subject to coups and political violence.
Also among those arrested in Ahmed’s case is renowned cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore, who kept a Facebook diary of political cartoons critical of the government, called “Life in the Time of Corona”.
Mr. Kishore remains in prison despite an appeal by a panel of experts from the United Nations Human Rights Council. The panel said Kishore should be released on humanitarian grounds, just as the government released thousands of others as a precaution for Covid-19, due to the health conditions that make him vulnerable to coronavirus.
A statement by the Committee to Protect Journalists on Ahmed’s death expressed concern that, during Kishore’s last hearing on Tuesday, he reported to relatives that he was “subjected to serious physical abuse while in custody police officer, sustaining serious leg injuries and ear injuries that led to infections due to lack of adequate medical care. “
“When my brother Kishore was introduced to the court on February 23, I was present there,” Ahsan Kabir, his brother, said in a telephone interview. “Kishore told me that he was tortured between the 2nd and the 6th of May.”