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What happens to a society when telling the truth is treated like a crime? In too many places today, the answer is playing out in real time: journalists beaten or killed, newsrooms shuttered, accreditation yanked, lawsuits weaponized, and vague “national security” laws stretched until they snap the spine of free expression. Over the past year, Bangladesh has become a stark case study in this unravelling, and its story rhymes with patterns visible from Pakistan to the Philippines, from Afghanistan to Hong Kong and mainland China. The trend is measurable, the victims are named, and the consequences are profound for public life, human dignity, and the fragile bridge of trust between citizens and the state.

Bangladesh: A dangerous shift from intimidation to murder

The chilling escalation in Bangladesh is not hypothetical. On June 25, 2025, journalist Khandaker Shah Alam was killed in Nabinagar; UNESCO’s Director-General publicly condemned the murder. Weeks later, on August 7, Md. Asaduzzaman Tuhin was stabbed to death in Gazipur after reporting on extortion, prompting urgent calls for protection from international press groups. These were not isolated tragedies; they occurred against a backdrop of surging violence against media workers.

The violence has been paired with policy moves that throttle access and intimidate critics. After the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s interim authorities revoked press accreditation for a scale, first dozens, then 167 journalists—a drastic step that newsrooms and rights groups condemned as punitive and chilling. Stripping credentials doesn’t just bar reporters from buildings; it bars the public from timely, accountable information at precisely the moment when a country is renegotiating its social contract.

Civil-society monitors have quantified the danger. ARTICLE 19 has placed Bangladesh “in crisis,” citing an expression score of 15 in its 2025 Global Expression Report and warning that Tuhin’s murder fits a wider pattern of attacks on media workers. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) likewise flagged a surge in serious attacks, even as Bangladesh’s position in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, while improved on paper, still reflects severe constraints on independent reporting. A rank that edges upward does not automatically translate into safety on the ground when knives and cudgels do the daily talking.

“Security” laws as silencers—and why words like “sedition” suddenly appear everywhere

There is a playbook now familiar across the region. Authorities invoke counter-terrorism, anti-subversion, cybercrime, or sedition statutes to arrest, re-arrest, or intimidate journalists whose work is inconvenient. The laws are framed broadly; who could oppose “sovereignty,” “public order,” or “online safety”? But applied narrowly, with a focus on dissent.

In India, the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling deeming the arrest of NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha illegal under the UAPA signalled judicial alarm about the misuse of draconian provisions to nab journalists first and explain later. In 2025, India’s top court further clarified that journalists’ articles or videos are not, prima facie, sedition under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita’s Section 152 (the successor framework to the colonial-era 124A), again warning against overreach, ironically, as prominent journalists faced fresh sedition summons in Assam. These mixed signals, relief from courts alongside new police actions, cultivate a climate in which many reporters conclude that self-censorship is safer than courage.

In Iran, journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, whose reporting helped expose the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, were handed multi-year sentences, later adjusted and subject to pardons amid ongoing pressure. The message lands even when sentences change: cover a story the state wants buried, and pay for it with years of your life.

In China, the prominent independent journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin, a leading voice in the country’s #MeToo movement, was sentenced to five years for “inciting subversion,” part of a longer arc of criminalising civic discourse. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, the national-security trial of publisher Jimmy Lai has become a global litmus test: if opinion pieces and advocacy count as “collusion,” then the line between journalism and treason is whatever authorities say it is today.

In Sri Lanka, a controversial online safety law gives the government broad powers to order removals of speech and pursue users, on paper, to target harms, in practice, a ready lever for political control. Tamil journalists who probe mass graves or wartime abuses report interrogations and counter-terror summonses.

And in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s intelligence apparatus has normalised the detention and torture of reporters, with at least seven arrests in July alone and multiple convictions for “propaganda”- a label that can mean simply reporting on women’s rights. RSF and CPJ document a conveyor belt of arbitrary arrests, closed trials, and intimidation.

The deadliest line of work: Murders that echo beyond the newsroom

Imprisonment chills; murder freezes. The Philippines, long one of the world’s most dangerous countries for media, delivered another grim headline in July 2025: radio broadcaster Erwin Labitad Segovia was shot dead after his morning show in Mindanao. The killing matched a familiar pattern: unidentified assailants on a motorcycle, a journalist who scrutinised local governance, and a community left with more fear than answers. Each such murder teaches others to stay silent.

Across Asia and beyond, the tally is relentless. UNESCO reported at least 68 journalists killed in 2024, with over 60% in conflict zones, the highest such proportion in a decade. CPJ counted 361 journalists behind bars at the start of 2024, with China and Myanmar among the leading jailers; by 2025, its database tracked dozens of journalists killed worldwide. Numbers are not abstractions: they are empty chairs at family tables, unfinished investigations, and communities that will never see the stories that might have saved lives or public money.

Bangladesh in a regional mirror

It’s important to avoid sweeping claims about any religion or culture: suppression of speech is not a feature of faith but of power—authoritarian power that often cloaks itself in religion, nationalism, or “stability.” Bangladesh’s current trajectory mirrors a regional pattern seen in Pakistan (journalists killed in Balochistan; repeated targeting of reporters), in Myanmar (mass jailing under terrorism laws), in Afghanistan (Taliban detentions), and in Hong Kong/Mainland China (national security regimes used to criminalise dissent and independent media). The common denominator is not creed; it’s the calculated use of legal and extralegal tools to control narratives.

Why this matters: The civic physics of fear

Silencing journalists doesn’t just hurt journalists. It harms everyone by breaking the feedback loop that democracies and even pragmatic governments depend on:

  • Corruption rises, competence falls. When investigative reporters can’t probe procurement, policing, or public health, scandals multiply in the dark. Citizens pay twice: first in taxes siphoned off, then in services that fail. This isn’t theory; it’s why authoritarian environments often correlate with costlier infrastructure, deadlier disasters, and slower recoveries.
  • Polarisation hardens. When independent media are sidelined, citizens sort into propaganda bubbles where outrage is oxygen and rumour becomes policy.
  • Violence metastasises. Attacks on journalists are both a symptom and a signal of impunity. If a reporter can be stabbed for documenting extortion (as in Gazipur), who else can be intimidated into silence? The answer is: whistleblowers, judges, scientists, teachers, and anyone who relies on facts to do their job.
  • Markets take notice. Investors price in legal risk and opacity. CPJ has warned that Hong Kong’s crackdown jeopardises not only a free press but also its reputation as a safe, rules-based business hub. Capital, like truth, hates arbitrary power.

“How long can voices be muffled?”

History suggests: longer than we expect and shorter than censors hope. Suppression buys quiet, not consent. Three forces reliably erode information autarky:

  • Technology leaks. Even with platform controls, information moves via encrypted apps, diaspora outlets, satellite channels, mesh networks, and simple human travel.
  • Courts push back. India’s highest court has, in key moments, stepped in against investigative overreach. Other judiciaries in the region—often unevenly—have at times checked executive excess.
  • Economies demand data. Governance without credible statistics and scrutiny is governance that misallocates resources. Over time, citizens (and markets) punish systems they cannot trust.

But “over time” can be painfully long for the people in the crosshairs. That’s why impunity is the central battleground. When killers of journalists walk free, the lesson is learned instantly and widely.

The debate: Governments must stop dodging

States argue: “We’re fighting disinformation, terrorism, foreign subversion.” Fair enough, those are real threats. But the cure cannot be worse than the disease. Three tests separate necessary regulation from narrative control:

  •  Precision: Are laws tightly drawn to target concrete harms or written so broadly that any dissent can be shoehorned in? (Compare targeted rulings against illegal arrests with open-texture sedition or cybercrime provisions.
  •  Proportionality: Do penalties fit the offence, and do prosecutions require actual evidence of incitement or violence—not merely criticism?
  •  Due Process & Transparency: Secret hearings, incommunicado detention, and denial of counsel are red flags. Afghanistan’s and Myanmar’s practices fail these tests outright; Hong Kong’s sweeping national security framework has too often blurred them.

Asia’s recent record, country by country (A selective sampling)

  • Bangladesh: Murders of Khandaker Shah Alam and Md. Asaduzzaman Tuhin; revocation of accreditations (59, then 167); RSF and rights groups warn of a surge in attacks. Each incident narrows public space and incentivises self-censorship.
  • India: Illegal arrest of NewsClick founder under UAPA quashed by the Supreme Court; 2025 clarification that journalism is not per se sedition under Section 152; yet new sedition-case summonses emerge. India sits 151/180 on RSF’s 2025 index—better than 2024 but still in the “very serious” category.
  • Pakistan: Journalists Abdul Latif Baloch and others killed; UNESCO condemned the earlier killing of Malik Zafar Iqbal Naich while distributing newspapers. Killings in Balochistan, in particular, highlight the risk when militias and politics intertwine.
  • Afghanistan: Taliban detentions and convictions of journalists (e.g., Sayed Rahim Saeedi), reports of torture, shuttering of outlets. RSF documents systematic abuse by the GDI; July 2025 saw at least seven arrests.
  • Myanmar: Dozens of journalists jailed; five-year terrorism sentences; reports of torture and media shutdowns as the junta moves toward sham elections without a free press.
  • Hong Kong / Mainland China: Jimmy Lai faces life imprisonment in a case built on opinion pieces and alleged foreign contacts; Sophia Huang Xueqin receives five years for “inciting subversion.” RSF charts Hong Kong’s plunge to 140/180 in press freedom rankings.
  • Philippines: Radio broadcaster Erwin Labitad Segovia was gunned down after his show; CPJ and IFJ call for accountability. Decades of impunity have made targeted attacks against local radio a recurring method of silencing.
  • Sri Lanka: An expansive online safety law passed in 2024 drew strong criticism; in 2025, Tamil photojournalists faced counter-terror summonses for sensitive reporting, evidence that speech controls migrate from statute to station house.

“Fascism,” “bigotry,” and the language we choose

Words matter, especially charged ones. It’s undeniable that authoritarian tactics (cult-of-leader narratives, paramilitary proxies, criminalisation of dissent) mirror what scholars describe as fascist strategies. And religious bigotry is frequently exploited to justify censorship or vigilante violence—whether the pretext is “blasphemy,” “insulting the nation,” or “hurting sentiments.” But to keep the focus on accountability rather than identity, it’s crucial to condemn policies and perpetrators, not entire communities. Across Asia, journalists from Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and secular backgrounds alike are being muzzled by political actors who instrumentalise faith or nationalism to consolidate power.

Human and social costs: What we lose when we lose the press

  •  Memory: Journalism is the rough draft of history. When drafts are destroyed, a country’s collective memory becomes a blank space that power fills at will.
  • Solidarity: Attacks on reporters fracture civil society. If a reporter covering extortion is killed, why would a nurse expose a drug shortage or a teacher speak about a failing school? Fear is contagious.
  •  Policy Feedback: Epidemics, floods, and economic shocks demand real-time truth. A gagged press is a public-health risk and a fiscal hazard.
  •  Dignity: Freedom of expression is not just an instrument; it’s an intrinsic good, the right to think aloud in one’s own country without being treated as an enemy.

What works: Five practical commitments for states—and for everyone else

  • End impunity, fast. Dedicated prosecutorial units for crimes against journalists, with international technical assistance, can raise clearance rates. Publicise progress not as PR but as a deterrent.
  • Narrow the laws. Replace vague “sedition” and elastic anti-terror clauses with precise, harm-based statutes. India’s top court has modelled how judiciaries can resist misuse; legislatures should follow by rewriting the rules.
  • Protect the front line. Provide safety training and emergency hotlines; ensure police treat journalists as civic partners at protests and crime scenes, not as targets.
  • Fund independence. Advertising boycotts and tax harassment starve dissent. Create transparent rules for government advertising, ban retaliatory audits, and support plural funding models for independent outlets.
  • Guarantee access. Accreditation should never be a loyalty test. Bangladesh’s mass cancellations show how fast access can become a weapon. Reinstate credentials and decouple them from editorial stance.

The unanswered question at every crime scene

At the site of every attack on a journalist, every stabbing, shooting, raid, or midnight knock, there’s a silent question hanging in the air: Who benefits from our fear? The answer is never “the people.” It is always those who prefer their power uninspected, their contracts unscrutinized, their narratives unchallenged.

Bangladesh’s recent murders and clampdowns underscore a simple truth: speech isn’t truly free if speaking costs your life. And yet, the demand for truth is stubborn. It survives in stringers filing from the margins, in families who insist on inquests, in lawyers who argue that journalism is not sedition, and in citizens who refuse to confuse flattery with patriotism.

“How long can voices be muffled?” Long enough to do lasting harm. But not long enough to erase the human impulse to witness and to tell. That impulse is older than any government and stronger than any law designed to criminalise it. The task before us, states, courts, newsrooms, and audiences, is to make sure the cost of truth-telling is not paid in blood.

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