Pooja Mahabadi, Pune
As the Protests against Prime Minister Hasina Sheikh’s government continue raging, reports say that the Bangladeshi Government has imposed strict internet shutdowns banning the use of several social media platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok Tok, and some more meta applications.
This recent ban resulted in Fresh Protests leaving two dead and more than 100 protestors injured. These new protests have been burning since Friday, 2nd August, and have left many concerned about whether the internet services will be restored anytime soon. This is not the first time Bangladesh has imposed bans on internet usage.
Bangladesh decided to take this step right after the news of the ban on social media use in Turkey reached the world, Turkey announced their decision to ban Instagram in the country, however, no reason was presented. A local newspaper Sabah reports that the ban on Instagram came in after a lot of posts of many Turkish users expressing condolences to the recently killed Hamas Political Chief were removed from the social networking site.
This news was first reported by Global Eyes News on the official X account saying that access to many social media sites starting Friday would be restricted nationwide. The government aims to control the flow of information that is spread to prevent potential violent disruptions during this critical time.
This latest ban is not the first, it was followed by several other Meta applications shut down in the past few weeks of unrest in Bangladesh. These bans were put in during the protests which erupted with respect to quota reforms, sources say that access to Meta platforms was cut off via mobile phone networks around 12:15 PM on the 2nd of August. These restrictions are a threaded part of a series of internet restrictions imposed in July. The nation saw the first mobile network disabling act on July 17 this was followed by a nationwide broadband shutdown on July 18. The broadband services were restored by the authorities July 23, mobile networks remained offline till July 28.
There is a surge in the usage of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which could probably slow down the recently established internet speeds in the country.