Bangladeshi🇧🇩 Journalists✍🏻 Self-Censor as🗳 Election Approaches*

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With less than a month to go to a general election, many journalists in Bangladesh say they are living in fear of ever-tightening media laws and engaging in self-censorship as a result.

While Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s administration has won plaudits globally for welcoming hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in Myanmar, critics have lashed out at it for cracking down on free speech and an increasingly authoritarian rule.

In interviews conducted with 32 journalists and editors across print, digital and broadcast media in Bangladesh, the vast majority said the recent strengthening of defamation laws with a new Digital Security Act (DSA) has spread a climate of fear in the industry. Dozens of journalists were arrested for defamation under the earlier law, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act.