UP | uncultured project

Coming to Bangladesh has given me a greater appreciation for all the freedoms we enjoy in America and elsewhere in the Western World. Sometimes I think we forget just how free things are over there. In the United States, if my cellphone wasn’t working and if I couldn’t get online with my computer, I would just assume that I wasn’t getting any reception and that I had a bad internet connection. I could never imagine, as did actually happen here in Bangladesh, that the government would order the shutdown of cellphone networks and internet access gateways.

In America, when I watch 24-hour news programs like CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, I know they can each have their own bias – but they are allowed to say what they want. I could never imagine that the government would forcibly shut down any one of these stations because one of them said something the government didn’t like. But that’s exactly what happened to CSB – Bangladesh’s only 24-hour news network. After airing footage of anti-government protests, the government shut down the station. (I am linking to the CSB entry in Wikipedia because the government not only took the station off the air, but also shutdown their website as well)

Eventually, I’m sad to say, this kind of censorship changes how you react. So, when I and others were consistently unable to access many Bangladeshi blogs hosted on Blogspot – my first reaction was to assume that this was a new form of government censorship. Blocking blogs is not something new – Pakistan and Turkey do it presently for WordPress.com (and, previously, were also blocking Blogspot.com). But, sometimes – as it seems to be in this case – this was just a technical glitch that affected multiple users on multiple ISPs. Unfortunately, governments that choose to limit free speech usually don’t make press releases stating that they are going to be doing so.

Life would be much easier if every government that wanted to censor or limit free speech would make a press release saying “Oh hai! Im in ur internetz – censorinz ur speech” (and if the press release was worded like that, life would also be much cuter).

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are key elements to any successful military curfew. The goal is to not to intimidate the population with what they know you are doing, but rather make worry about what they are not sure you are doing. With a military imposed media blackout, those tuning into BBC World news for foreign news find that when the story about Dhaka and the Bangladesh military curfew airs – the broadcast suddenly becomes filled with static. Coincidence or intentional? The BBC correspondent – filing his report via cellphone – cuts off in mid-report. Bad connection or was he cut off on purpose? If there is uncertainty and doubt – there is fear. And thus, there is control.

With my previous post, I had hoped that the military had yet to catch up to the internet age. Despite a media blackout and blocking of cellphone calls, I was still able to upload photos to flickr and use gmail and MSN messenger. Today, the internet has slowed to a crawl. The gateway connecting Bangladesh to the internet via transatlantic cables have been shut down. Even with V-Sat backup connections, websites like BBC World News and services such as Gmail, and MSN Messenger fail to load at all. Even Facebook, which has always been reliable, suddenly displays a message reading “Hey, your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance”. Coincidence? Or intentional?

It’s times like this that the freedom enjoyed by Americans and other Western nations is put in perspective. Even with cameras on street corners, warrant-less wiretapping, or other Big Brother-esque infringements – Americans and much of the Western World have much to be grateful for.