A news report of an English daily said telecommunication regulatory authority BTRC on Saturday instructed all mobile phone operators and International Gateway operators to stop Viber and Tango services from 12am to 6pm on Sunday. Later, this was extended through a verbal order. The decision was taken following an order from an intelligence agency. The foreign embassies have also been notified about the closure of the service. BTRC informed that the situation might linger further. According to the BTRC officials, the government does not have any mechanism to intercept the services of Viber or Tango. So the Home Ministry sent an order to stop the services. An online report on Monday informed that the government also blocked three more online voice and messaging services — WhatsApp, mypeople and Line and extended the bar on Viber and Tango till January 21 midnight.
‘Security threat’ has been assigned as the main reason for imposing a bar on using Viber and Tango in Bangladesh. But it is not obvious from the government decision that who are being threatened thru these services. The countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia earlier tried to put obstacles banning social media services like Viber and others. But they utterly failed because the new IT generations are now equipped with more sophisticated software to create new apps to overcome any hurdle. The tragedy is that authorities often forget to read the real happenings around the globe and therefore try to use the old blunt methods to suppress the wills of the common masses. Though experts suspect other reason of putting blockade to social media whispering that these were actually hampering the interests of some vested quarters to boost illegal money through illegal VOIP calling.
We can only say that a government claiming to be elected has to be elected through a free and fair election. Hiding behind a fictitious election and relying on corruption will not work. It is not also possible to hide truth from the world however hard one may try. We are sorry for the advisers around the government.
