Ladies and gentlemen "FREEDOM" cannot come without responsibility. They go hand in hand. You can ask ANY noted American scholars, they will tell you about "Limits" of "Free speech" concept. In America, there are many restrictions in place. In the USA, if you cause damage or cause stress to another person, they can take you to court. ALSO any lawyer will tell you, you CANNOT scream fire in a movie theater in the USA without an actual fire.
All of these restrictions and limitation have been codified in the US to protect innocent people.
It will be unwise to assume that, I support a new blasphemy law in Bangladesh. I do NOT. Ini order to change my view on it, I need to see enough "Controls" and "Safe guards" in place to protect innocent civilians. Today laws are mostly abused to "Punish" social or political opponents. That is not why we have laws in books.
However like our honorable PM, I feel we have enough laws in books to take care of hate-mongering and to protect people from malicious intent to destabilize our country.
Also do understand, in our country people "Smell politics" if you want to praise Dr. Yunus. So I feel we have to be careful with the power internet gives us. We have to use it to help people and our country NOT to hurt our country and people in it.
So to have more "Free speech" environment we need to have a strong "Cyber police" and "Signals intelligence" unit to prevent abuse. Needless to say we would have to make sure people are NOT tortured based on allegations in police custody.
Do note that, every matured free and democratic country have strong police force and justice department.
Until some controls over abusers of "Free speech", it would be better to use some caution.
Also our country needs to mature a bit more. Even India allows a lot more freedom to comedians. They can make fun of their politicians, policies in TV, radio, internet etc. We are not there yet. So in this backdrop if people are allowed to mock and abuse religion and religious figures, it will cause more bad than good in our country.
This was one of the main complaints of religious leaders in Dhaka. They said, if someone says something unsavory about a political leader, they get arrested. But people who spread hate speech and falsehood were given "Protection".
For example even in this forum, I see a tendency to put a label of me as some kind of supporter of political party (Yeah, supporting Dr. Yunus can get political in a hurry). Even a forum call "Mukto-mona" cannot handle free speech in the right spirit. How can we expect rest of the country to welcome it?
IN order to have effective policies, we have to stay connected with aspirations of wishes of our population. After all we are a "People's republic" not an autocratic country!!
Our "Jonogon" are the real owner of the country, so wanton abuse of religion and religious figures should be checked but that should NOT stop people from asking good thoughtful questions.
Thus we can take US concept of "Free speech" as our inspiration but it has to tampered with our culture, maturity, conditions law related institutions etc. If we try to "insert" a concept without considering consequences, it may end up hurting us more than helping us.
Shalom!
From: Mukto-Mona Writers' Corner <charbak_bd@yahoo.com>
To: mukto-mona <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Apr 23, 2013 6:51 pm
Subject: [mukto-mona] [Mukto-Mona Writers' Corner] TITLE
offend'
The right to express one's opinion freely is maybe the most important
democratic right, and it is currently under assault in Bangladesh.
Hifazat-e-Islam demands the introduction of strict blasphemy laws, and the
government, instead of defending freedom, resorts to an ill-advised and
imprudent appeasement strategy that hinders the press in its duty to inform the
public, threatens the futures of young bloggers who were, and continue to be,
arrested, and puts in peril the future of the democracy of the country.
You may view the latest post at
http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=2061
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Mukto-Mona Writers' Corner
charbak_bd@yahoo.com
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Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Re: [mukto-mona] [Mukto-Mona Writers' Corner] TITLE
With all due respect to Mr. Ebert, I am sure that we don't have any issues with "Free speech". As I said earlier, internet, free speech and blogs are relatively new to most Bangladeshis. It is apparent that, a small number of bloggers do not understand the difference between "Free speech" and "Libel"/defamation.
Personally, I am VERY comfortable with most users and abusers of free speech. But I do not represent all of Bangladesh and we are still a very much protective of our religion and traditions.
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Mukto-Mona Writers' Corner has posted a new item, 'Blasphemy and the right to
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