FOTP 2013 Full Report

offending advertisers that do not want their businesses associated with critical reporting. Thegovernment maintains a monopoly on broadcast media, allowing the regime to shape publicperceptions of the prodemocracy movement and characterize it as sectarian extremism. Privateoperating licenses are not awarded despite continued interest from media owners. However, thereis some room for free expression on television call-in shows. Foreign radio and televisionbroadcasts are generally received without interference, and the majority of households haveaccess to satellite stations; Qatar’s Al-Jazeera and Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya, based in the UnitedArab Emirates, remain Bahraini citizens’ main sources of news. In addition, around 88 percent ofBahrain’s population accessed the internet in 2012.BangladeshStatus: Partly FreeLegal Environment: 15Political Environment: 22Economic Environment: 16Total Score: 53Survey Edition 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012Total Score, Status 68,NF 63,NF 56,PF 54,PF 52,PFBangladesh’s media environment remained relatively open in 2012, despite some worrying signsof intolerance by the government and an increase in physical harassment against the press.Although the constitution provides for freedom of expression subject to “reasonable restrictions,”the press can be constrained by national security legislation as well as by sedition and criminallibel laws. The punishment for sedition ranges from three years to life in prison. The 15thamendment to the constitution, passed in July 2011, includes language that equates criticism ofthe constitution with sedition. Journalists can also be arrested under the 1974 Special PowersAct—which allows detentions of up to 90 days without trial—for stories that are critical ofgovernment officials or policies, or they can be charged with contempt of court. Arrestsstemming from defamation charges continued to occur in 2012. In January, a university lecturerwas given a six-month jail sentence for comments made in 2011 on Facebook about PrimeMinister Sheikh Hasina. The opposition-oriented daily Amar Desh has faced a barrage of legaland regulatory threats over the past several years. Acting editor and majority owner MahmudurRahman, who spent 10 months in jail in 2010–11 on charges of harming the country’s reputation,was charged with sedition in December 2012, following the publication of a story regardingleaked conversations between a judge and a lawyer/activist based in Brussels.Since its passage, the 2009 Right to Information Act has improved transparency andaccountability. It applies to all information held by public bodies, simplifies the fees required toaccess information, overrides existing secrecy legislation, and grants greater independence to theInformation Commission (IC) tasked with overseeing and promoting the law, according to thepress freedom group Article 19. The law has been used primarily for investigative journalism. InFebruary 2012, the high court upheld a fine levied by the IC on an official who refused toprovide information under the law.82