A comedian has been charged by the Indian authorities for supposedly hurting religious sentiments after a group of right-wing Hindus crashed his show and confronted him over jokes he allegedly made about Hindu deities.
Munawar Faruqui, a young
stand-up comedian from Gujarat, was arrested by the police along with four other people on Friday after several members of a fringe group, associated with a local politician from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ), ambushed him after the show.
But later, amid a growing outcry over the comedian's treatment, police said in a statement that there was no video evidence to prove Faruqui made remarks either insulting Hindu deities. Nonetheless, police continue to hold Faruqui while they investigate
the allegations.
Nabab LLB is a 2020 Bangladesh thriller by Ananyo Mamun Starring Shakib Khan,Mahiya Mahi,Orchita Sporshia
On 25 December 2020, film director Anonno Mamun and actor Shaheen Mridha have been
charged with making a film with pornographic content . Dhaka Metropolitan Police arrested the artists the day before due to a case filed against them under the Pornography Control Act for allegedly insulting the police in the film Nabab LLB
.
The film Nabab LLB was released on 16 December 2020 and is set in a fictional courtroom, treating about rape and the treatment of victims.
According to Al Jazeera , the report released by Dhaka Metropolitan Police points to making and acting in a film containing such offensive and obscene dialogue
as a reason for the artists' arrest. The report also highlights that the police was poorly represented in the film and that the representation of the police officer using offensive gestures and obscene language during the fictional
interrogation in the film could cause negative perceptions about policing among public.
There is a petition calling on the Dhaka Metropolitan Police to drop all charges against Anonno Mamun and Shaheen Mridha has been circulated online.
Sign the petition here .
A right leaning Indian news channel known for its strong pro-government stance and firebrand host has been fined by the UK TV censor Ofcom for broadcasting hate speech about Pakistan .
Republic TV was fined £20,000 for airing a segment on its UK
service, which conveyed the view that all Pakistani people are terrorists, including their scientists, doctors, their leaders, politicians [...] Even their sports people.
The primetime show Poochta Hai Bharat aired on 6 September 2019 on
the Hindi-language version of the channel, Republic Bharat.
Republic TV is one of the most widely watched channels in India, with news anchor and founder Arnab Goswami hosting aggressive current affairs debates, which regularly air rightwing opinions
while pointing and shouting at viewers down the camera.
Ofcom said it had received multiple complaints from viewers for the highly pejorative references to members of the Pakistani community (eg continually referring to them as 'filthy') on Goswami's
show.
Ofcom summarised that the show failed to comply with UK broadcasting rules as it had spread, incited, promoted and justified such intolerance towards Pakistani people among viewers.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has analysed the provisions of a new set of online content regulations that the Pakistani government decreed without any consultation with stakeholders, and which are clearly designed to impose draconian online censorship.
Published last month by the information ministry and entitled Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards), Rules 2020 , the new regulations replace an earlier set of rules that were suspended in
February because of a civil society outcry .They have ended up going much further, granting disproportionate and discretionary powers to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the online content regulator, which is a direct government offshoot.
On national security grounds, the rules provide for the withdrawal or blocking of any content that excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the federal or provincial government or harms the reputation of any person holding public
office. It is equally concerning that the rules also provide for the censorship of any content regarded as indecent, immoral or harmful to the glory of Islam , without giving any precise definition of these extremely vague concepts. The
interpretation is left to the PTA, which thereby acquires arbitrary and almost infinite powers.
The rules also empower the PTA to act as both plaintiff and judge. It is the PTA that decides, without reference to a court , whether content violates the
criminal code and, worse still, it is the PTA that reexamines cases in the event of a challenge, and rules on any appeals.
Platforms are also legally obliged to hand over user data when asked, including data from private and encrypted communications.
And platforms with more than 500,000 users are required to open an office in Pakistan, install servers there and register with the authorities.