Firing cannons to kill mosquitoes: Controlling ‘virtual streets’ and the ‘image of the state’ in Bangladesh
This article examines the Bangladeshi state schemes to make its population ‘legible’. The Information and Communication Technology Act developed into the Digital Security Act and was implemented under the framework of digital Bangladesh. These acts attempt to control the ‘virtual streets’ of Bangladesh. The application of ICT and DSA has become an increasingly visible and controversial means to provide the spectacle of a state that extends disciplinary power and governmentality into proliferating online spaces.
Criminalisation of online speech has enabled the creation of ‘digital vigilantes’ who are predominantly the powerful, the sycophants, and the multitude of attention seekers who are driven by their personal contestations and ambitions.
On 18 November 2018, Mr Chowdhury—a self-proclaimed ‘die-hard supporter’ of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh—sent a legal notice to the cinema at the Jamuna Future Park shopping mall, which was screening the newly released biopic: Hasina: A Daughter’s Tale (Khan 2018). ‘Tale’ in the title was misspelled as ‘tail’ and was corrected later. Mr Chowdhury felt that the spelling mistake was humiliating and demanded the Blockbuster cinema correct the error and apologise publicly or face a $90 million (£70 million) lawsuit. In online exchanges, opinion was split about the lawsuit: ‘How should I react - laugh or cry? Tale becomes tail which is definitely defamatory’ said one Facebook user, while another responded by saying: ‘It’s just a typo, bro. Apparently, you are using cannons to fight mosquitoes’ (cited in BBC NEWS, 2018).
This incident highlights the prevalence of events/actions where individuals feel that the state has been humiliated, and they need to take steps to redress it in the context of Section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act (ICT Act 2006). First enacted by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in 2006, the Act was amended and made more draconian by the Awami League (AL) government, culminating as the harsher Digital Security Act (DSA) passed on 8 October 2018 under the framework of Digital Bangladesh.
Section 57 criminalises electronic content, which is deemed to be fake and obscene, defamatory, hurts religious sentiments could contribute to the deterioration of law and order, could ‘instigate’ another person to perform harmful acts or could tarnish the ‘image’ of the state.
The ICT, now the DSA has been invoked in numerous events from 2006 to 2019. Rights activists and journalists have been critical of section 57 from the initial stages of its development; experts say the provision goes against people’s right to freedom of expression and free speech, and it contains vague wording, allowing its misuse against journalists and social media users. In the case of the misspelling of the film, the DSA was not invoked, as it was a mistake, but a lawsuit was threatened.
The phrase mosha marte kaman daga—firing cannons to kill mosquitoes—refers to a disproportionate response to a problem. Such an overblown response was also at work against the protests relating to the road safety movement.
On 29 July 2018, two students, Abdul Karim and Dia Khanom Mim, of Shaheed Ramiz Uddin Cantonment School, were run down by a private bus in Dhaka (Lacy 2018). These road deaths were just two among the many that occur on a regular basis and are usually seen as one of the hazards of travelling in Bangladesh by road. But this incident brought into focus the corruption that is viewed to be rife in the transportation industry in Bangladesh and the irresponsibility of some drivers.
In response to protests that followed, the implementation of the ICT Act, resulted in 86 people from Bangladesh (including photographer and activist Shahidul Alam, leader of the student’s federation Maruf, University student Asif, actor Nawshaba and many others) being arrested and remanded between 3 and 15 August, 2018, in relation to this road safety movement.
While new forms of digital governmentality, bureaucracy and surveillance are pivotal in creating the imaginations of an omnipresent state, authors argue that the deployment of the ICT Act and the DSA highlights the vulnerability of the seemingly omniscient state.
What is alarming is how new laws are being used to limit discussion of older, more ‘traditional’ problems (corruption, problems of governance, violations of rights, denial of democratic rights and space), and the invocation of ‘older’ problems (the hurting of religious sentiment, tarnishing the image of the state) is being deployed in attempts to control the new technologies that the state is both seduced by and terrified of—the poison and cure of Digital Bangladesh—while it continues to fight with its own shadow in its search for adversaries.
Article Details
‘Firing cannons to kill mosquitoes’: Controlling ‘virtual streets’ and the ‘image of the state’ in Bangladesh
Mark Lacy, Nayanika Mookherjee
First Published May 14, 2020 Research Article
DOI: 10.1177/0069966720917923
Contributions to Indian Sociology