Mother is arrested in Bangladesh after son in the U.S. criticizes government online

Tazmanian@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 434 points –
yahoo.com

A Ph.D. student at Michigan State University said his mother was arrested in Bangladesh after he criticized the country's government in a Facebook post.

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Maybe they wanted to prove that the criticism was justified.

This is specific to journalists, but it's relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Bangladesh#Assault_and_harassment_of_relatives_of_journalists

Pulled one example:

In March, 2023, Awami League's armed cadres, loyal to Sheikh Hasina beaten the brother of Al-Jazeera I-Unit journalist Zulkarnain Saer Khan in front of his home in Dhaka. The attacker, while attacking, said, “Your brother writes against the prime minister, against the government? He’s a journalist? Now you’ll see.”[19] Zulkarnain Saer Khan exposed the corruption of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the Al-Jazeera documentary All the Prime Minister's Men in 2022 and led an investigation against Sheikh Hasina's close aide Abdus Sobhan Golap's corruption who secretly bought nine properties of 4 million USD in the New York.

I remember this from when I was looking up a few places that surprised me when going through the Press Freedom Index. It might just be because I'm not familiar with these places, and it speaks to the assumptions we might make, but I was surprised to see a few countries so far down the list / below other ones.

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What a piece of shit country Bangladesh is.

Shit hole country. Added it to the list.

Don't buy clothes made there. You have to send a monetary message to the companies that enable these governments by doing business with them. Money is the only language that anyone in power understands.

Hey, honest question, will an individual purchase being cancelled matter at all? Unless someone is on the board for government policy or maybe if you're like a garment importer or something maybe you can hit em where it hurts but otherwise i feel like this is just some wishful thinking.

As a solitary individual? Not even a little bit. But if enough individuals make a stand, it gets noticed. Without a marketing campaign to raise awareness there wouldn't be a significant impact. But you at least know that you're not personally supporting such behavior. If enough people make a similar decision then it could get some exposure and gain traction. There are a lot of companies I won't do business with because of their ethics. They don't care, but I do. So I guess I'm saying there are two parts to it, your personal choices, and a movement that actually impacts the companies and country. The latter is a full-time job to enact, the former is something you can easily control.

I bet it must feel good to be him. Yeah, some real changes he made.

It's certainly not the oppressive government that is to blame or morally scold here. Definitely. It must be the person just voicing their frustration with it that's the problem. Absolutely.

Really - just re-read what kind of BS you're saying.