RAB chief Benazir for overcoming ‘deficiencies’ in ICT Act instead of revoking Section 57

The ‘updated’ ICT law can be changed if it has any ‘shortcomings’ instead of scrapping it altogether, the RAB chief says.

Benazir Ahmed told a dialogue on Saturday that if needed “a separate schedule can be attached with this law.
 
bdnews24.com organised the ‘Dialogue on Safer Internet’ which was anchored by its Editor-in-chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi at Dhaka's Radisson Blu Water Garden Hotel.
 
A student of British School of Law Fahad Ghalib said unlike in the Bangladesh Penal Code, Section 57 (1) of the ICT Act did not define the crimes which are punishable under it.
 
“In such situation how can someone understand what will be considered as crime?” he asked.
 

RAB’s Ahmed said, “I don’t know whether Fahad has read the law.”

“According to the Section 57, if any information published on the website tends to deprave and corrupt persons or defames someone, or tarnishes the image of the state or an individual, it is an offence.“

“It is specifically mentioned that if someone publishes or transmits on the website or in electronic form any material which is fake and obscene. Here again what is fake can be defined... but ‘obscene’ is difficult to define, as its definition varies with changes in culture, value, and systems.

Moderator Khalidi reminded him that the section was drawing howls of protests because it was abused in many cases.
 
RAB chief Ahmed, however, disagreed.
 
“I don’t want to use the term ‘abuse’. I want to say (let’s see) if there is any ambiguity in the Act,” he said.
 

“It includes the issue of ‘obscenity’. Someone can challenge a nude image as obscene or decent. It can be an art to an artist. But is it an art to my seven-year-old child?” he asked.

“It is not subjective all the time. It should be objective...at the end of the day, I’ll have to have confidence in our judiciary,” he added.

Ahmed also praised the Act saying it was ‘good enough’.

At this stage of the dialogue, rights activist Khushi Kabir said, “Everyone desperately wants to know how we will define it in the context of relativity. The Section 57 of the ICT Act, should we consider it unrestricted?”

Ahmed replied, “I think....if there is any ambiguity, as I have said in my speech, a separate schedule can be attached with this law.”

“But that will create a problem for the government. The schedule may have to be updated every month.

“It can also be added that the abuser of the law will have to pay compensation,” he added.

He also suggested that it needed to be checked if someone was misleading others in the name of freethinking.

“A security system has been put in place. We will have to plug the gap in the system if there is any instead of discarding it,” he concluded.

State Minister for Post and Telecommunication Tarana Halim and State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak, among others, were in the panel.