Zakeria Shirazi

A TV ad designed to promote the sale of mobile phones states that since the call rate has been lowered the whole country will from now on be talking. The telephone company's bold marketing strategy is admirable and the people should indeed be facilitated and encouraged to talk but the fact is that the ability to talk into the cell phone with an added ease and convenience does not amount to freedom of expression. Man talks instinctively, and no one stops that. Sycophancy is also talking. The marginalised sections, particularly, must talk, individually or through a collective organ, and they must talk to express their feelings on the question of legitimate interests of themselves and of the country.

But situations arise when voices are throttled, media is gagged, and talking in the sense of expressing an opinion counter to the vested interests becomes dangerous. And the language movement showed that the fundamental right to speak one's own language could also be usurped. Ekushey was a movement to realise not the right of free speech but speech itself. Not free speech but the instinctive speech of the entire colonised people was going to be smothered. Domination, persecution and tortures are replete in history but there is no instance of the ruling class trying to rob the majority of their inborn right to speak their own language. Ekushey symbolises that inalienable right of the people. Ekushey celebrated the right of mother language and this also became the starting point for the struggle for realising the right of free expression.

Democracy, as many will agree, is a seriously flawed system where demographic size and not intellectual height rules the roost. Detractors of democracy also say that in this system leaders do not lead the people but follow the people and cater to every popular fad with an eye to the vote bank. Yet, when all is said, this is the system which makes possible the free expression of views. That way democracy is able to foster the creative urge, as well as the spirit of dissent and protest, of the sections of populace who may be far removed from the hub of decision making. Nothing will remain of democracy if the right to free expression is abridged. However, in democracies also some rulers only want to hear good news and are not averse to punishing the couriers of unsavoury tidings. We won democracy at a great cost and upheld the freedom of expression which is an integral part of it. But threat kept looming.

The successive governments professed to encourage only 'constructive criticism' and constructive criticism is just a euphemism for unqualified praise. The immediate-past four-party alliance government is further memorable for the fact that ministers made it a practice to blame the media for all manner of ills. And even if there was no news gag, no enabling condition was created for the free flow of news. The anachronistic Official Secrecy Act of 1923 has not yet been repealed and the Right to Information Act is not yet in place. In this Information Age not free flow of information but stonewalling seemed to be the ruling creed in government offices. The issue of freedom of expression is related to peace and tolerance. When the overall atmosphere is one of intolerance, the rulers, or anybody, will find it hard to be charitable to critics. Just as free expression of views nurses democracy, it is also nursed by democracy. The two are interdependent. The right to free expression is enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 of this declaration says, 'Everyone has the right to opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers, either orally or … …'

Since 1991 when democracy was restored, in form if not in essence, the country's success in upholding the right of free expression has thus been a mixed one. But to the extent that the right could be exercised, it promoted popular enlightenment and helped to expose some bastions of evil. The media showed a promise of turning itself into an important factor in the consolidation of democracy. After the declaration of emergency the media in the country became indecisive, not being sure whether they were going to be leashed but soon came an official clarification that the press would not be controlled. But this looked like an afterthought or yielding to pressure.

Anyway, while media persons had to put up with all kinds of undeserved official censure and imputations of the past governments, they were also intimidated and attacked. In theory freedom of the press prevailed and outright official persecution was rare (not counting the harassment of Saleem Samad and two foreign journalists of Channel 4 who were investigating some communal incident). At any rate, Bangladesh has been listed as one of the most dangerous places for journalists, says the New York-based Committee for Protection of Journalists. The Paris-based watchdog body Reporters Sans Frontiers feels nearly the same way. It is not only the government of the day which is the enemy of free press; vested interests of different hues, smugglers and thugs and criminal syndicates have been at work endangering the lives and livelihoods of journalists. Journalists working in small towns and far-flung places have mostly been targeted. Twelve journalists were killed in the south-western areas of the country from 1923 to 2003 and in few instances were the cases pursued to a conclusion. In symbolic repression of journalists newspapers are burnt by hirelings of vested interests and in a spectacular demonstration of highhandedness some newspapers are forcibly barred from entry into some particular localities. Repression of free speech can take many forms.

While media persons in Bangladesh have to grapple with numerous limitations despite the absence of any formal censorship or officially sanctioned persecution, it should not be assumed that it is all rosy in the richer countries. The infamous Abu Ghraib prison included among its inmates six journalists. These purveyors of the freedom of expression were not allowed to contact relatives and lawyers but they were lucky by comparison. Four Iraqi journalists were killed by US army gunfire between September 2004 and September 2005. The phrase 'embedded journalist' popularised in 2003 during the Iraq war is a mockery of free expression. The treatment meted out to the New York Times reporter Judith Miller was a flagrant violation of the freedom of expression. The authorities in the US do not want to recognise now that a journalist has the right to keep the identity of their source secret. When the media is controlled by the Zionist-billionaires' interest or the military-industrial complex, many aberrations of democracy may creep into the system. If the media is not sound, democracy too may eventually be enfeebled. Even if democracy is preserved, good governance will suffer. In the global ranking of media freedom, the USA is nowhere near the top. (The RSF ranking placed it at the 44th position).

The struggle for the freedom of expression in a way antedates the struggle for democracy. It has claimed martyrs in different phases in the course of growth of civilisation, since Socrates drank the cup of Hemlock. Denial of this freedom and attempt to suppress it at different times constitutes the darkest opprobrium in the evolution of mankind. Record of the West is not much brighter. Galileo was tried and before that Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for saying that the earth moves round the sun. A frustrated John Milton wrote Areopagitica protesting against the proscription of books. All that was four centuries ago. Leftovers of that intolerance survive. When writers or the media do not have to fear government action, they have to take into account the angry reaction of the different aggressive groups out to terrorise any individual or organ that goes to disseminate views not liked by the former. Some newspapers faced the bomb threat.

The times are bad. The Information Age has its seamy sides. The country owes it to the deathless martyrs of the language movement to establish and consolidate the right of free expression. The language movement, in its deeper layers, embraced democracy, freedom of expression, secularism and equality. In the true spirit of Ekushey the struggle for free expression must be on.