Human Rights Watch (HRW), along with 44 other press freedom, digital rights and civil society groups, has written to the Bangladeshi telecoms regulator to drop its bid to regulate social media and OTT platforms arguing that it could suppress free expression online.
In a letter to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) on Monday, they said it was necessary to “protect people’s rights and freedom, and enable an open, free and secure internet”.
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The proposed regulations, “Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission Regulation for Digital, Social Media and OTT Platforms, 2021”, would imperil people’s freedom of expression and right to privacy, undermine encryption, and weaken online safety, the letter said.
“If enforced, the regulations will have a deleterious impact on human rights, and put journalists, dissidents, activists and vulnerable communities, in particular, at greater risk,” it added.
It said the regulations seek to implement a content governance framework devoid of adequate judicial oversight, clarity and predictability, and integration of human rights and due process, and that they are inconsistent with the international human rights framework, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
“We respectfully call upon the BTRC to withdraw and reconsider the draft regulations, as they erode digital security and put human rights and freedoms at risk,” the groups urged.
Their key concerns with respect to select provisions in the regulations include
• The absence of a safe harbour provision and spectre of penalties;
• The traceability requirement;
• The mandate for intermediaries to block an overbroad and ambiguous range of content;
• Truncated timelines for content removal;
• Overbroad definitions—for example, OTT is defined as “content, a service or an application that is provided to the end-user over the public internet”;
• The government’s plans to adopt a code of ethics;
