Internet freedom in Bangladesh declines in 2023
'Freedom on the Net 2023, published Wednesday said, "Online activists and journalists encountered increasing levels of physical violence and supporters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) faced an ongoing crackdown."
Internet freedom in Bangladesh has slipped back again in 2023, following an improvement last year after three years of decline, according to a report by the US-based think tank Freedom House.
The 13th edition of the report titled "Freedom on the Net 2023" published Wednesday said, "Online activists and journalists encountered increasing levels of physical violence and supporters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) faced an ongoing crackdown."
Bangladesh has scored 41 points out of 100, declining two points from the year before, indicating the country partly enjoyed Internet freedom. The country scored 43 in 2022, 40 in 2021, 42 in 2020.
Since 2013, Bangladesh has been consistently categorised as a "Partly Free" country on the Internet freedom index of Freedom House which documents how governments censor and control the digital sphere.
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"Internet and communications services were throttled several times ahead of BNP rallies. Authorities continued to target opposition leaders, journalists, government critics, and ordinary users under the Digital Security Act (DSA), fueling self-censorship online," reads the report.
"Corruption is endemic, and anticorruption efforts have been weakened by politicised enforcement," it says.
Freedom House, established in 1941, publishes the study of human rights online annually, which assesses the level of Internet freedom in 70 countries based on 21 indicators pertaining to obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights between 1 June 2022 and 31 May 2023.
The Internet freedom ratings are assigned under three categories – Free, Partly Free and Not Free. The index grades score between 100-70 as free, 69-40 as partly free and below 39 as not free in using the Internet.
Among the four South Asian countries reviewed, Bangladesh is only ahead of Pakistan as the latter continued to tightly control its online environment. It achieved only 26 points and was categorised as "Not Free" in terms of Internet freedom.
Bangladesh, however, is behind Sri Lanka and India that earned 52 and 50 points respectively and both designated as partly free.
Sri Lanka earned this year's largest score improvement worldwide (+4) after authorities did not repeat the blocking of social media platforms that had been imposed in April 2022 during mass anti-government protests.
Global Internet freedom declined for the 13th consecutive year as conditions deteriorated in 29 countries and improved in 20 others.
Iceland remained the best environment for Internet freedom for the fifth consecutive year, followed by Estonia.
For the ninth consecutive year, China was found to have the worst conditions for Internet freedom, a title that Myanmar came close to capturing in this year's report.
"Authorities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Thailand imposed restrictions on the online environment to undermine the opposition ahead of consequential national elections in 2023 and early 2024," mentioned in a press release for the Asia-Pacific region.
