Human rights activists in a seminar titled “Freedom of Speech Under Threat” on Saturday said that freedom of speech is a fundamental human right and its absence turns a human life into an animal’s life. The human rights campaigners urged everyone to raise their voice in favour of freedom of speech as it underpins the other rights and allows them to have their interests heeded. Without freedom of speech living like human beings becomes impossible.
The mistake we make is in holding that freedom of speech can exist separately from other rights. If people can lose their voting right easily it is deceitful to expect to exercise freedom of expression.
Such a government is not ready to live with truth. Suppression of truth through fear of insecurity is essential, because that is the way for the government to survive by lying. Such a government also undertakes dazzling projects for ensuring loyalty of the active supporters through illegal and easy wealth making practices.
An incompetent government cannot survive unless they combine the practice of ransacking public money and lying unabashedly.
Dictatorship is the model for them to adopt. If we can tolerate voter-less existence, we are accepting the situation of no citizenship for us.
We certainly have black laws against freedom of speech but yet no black law is necessary where abuse of law is the law. When the government says that someone will be brought under the law, it means that he will be taken care of by the police. Where the police is the law and the judiciary can pressurise not to grant bail there is no right for the people to talk about freedom of speech.
Nowhere dictatorship is to be found where freedom of speech exists. This is an anachronism we cannot be blind to.
In Bangladesh the politics we have inherited from these who went to India for India’s help to liberate Bangladesh is the antithesis to our long struggle for democracy. This was the political blunder of our political leadership at the top.
The leftists who had no place in the politics of Bangladesh became dominant players in politics with India’s blessings and our own politicians’ greed for power and money. What we have is corruption politics and the audacity of the corrupt ones to destroy honesty in all forms of politics including people’s rights.
To expect freedom of expression where journalists have chosen to be party activists of undemocratic politics is too unrealistic.
Not only that we are living with lies but expect truthfulness about anything to do with public affairs.
Such a government by giving free rein to police power creates dire fear of insecurity for all including the shortsighted government. Many police officers have been recruited from Awami League’s student wing. So such officers discharge their duties as political workers and not as law enforcers. The government has collapsed to the extent that it cannot change for its own survival.
So any discussion on freedom of speech in isolation is misleading.
