The arrest warrant against a National University teacher, for posting an unflattering Facebook status about the PM and her son is a preposterous mis-application of laws that were designed to safeguard the veracity of publicly available information.
It also takes our leaders’ inabilities to tolerate ridicule to unacceptable levels.
Not only is this a violation of the teacher’s fundamental right to express his thoughts and feelings on a personal platform, it is a threat to every individual in the country who might happen to have an opinion that contradicts the government-approved one.
It is precisely for reasons like these that the recently enhanced ICT law is viewed with alarm as it can easily become a serious impediment to our freedoms of thought and speech freedoms that Bangladeshis are not willing to surrender quite so easily.
The warrant raises other questions as well why and how can it be seditious or detrimental to the national interest to undermine the prime minister, much less her son, who is still just a private citizen?
Moves like these ill-suit a democratic republic and belong in kingdoms where speaking against the monarch is a punishable offence. Unless our leaders are trying to suggest they are unnaturally elevated and beyond the reproach of citizens who they are in fact, completely answerable to, they should discourage this from happening again in the future.
