“Saturday afternoon”: A film against a terrorist attack on a Bangladeshi bakery, or about a farmer’s march in India
Before shooting his movie, the filmmaker, Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, submitted the script for approval by the country’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He had received permission to cast prominent Indian and Palestinian actors, in addition to Bangladeshi artists.
While the film, titled “Saturday Afternoon”, is based on the terrorist attack on a bakery in Bangladesh’s capital that left 24 people dead, it has not been allowed to be released in the country.
For three years, the country’s film censor board has been denying Mr. Farooki’s appeals — an indication, analysts and activists say, of how the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is shrinking the space for free speech, sometimes in arbitrary ways.
“They didn’t inform us of a specific reason,” Mr. Farooki said of the film’s rejection. “They only said the film might tarnish the image of the country or incite religious unrest.”
The channel has nearly 3 million viewers, and they’re not sure where the red lines are. “I don’t know if I make a video on the BBC documentary, can the government pull that off, also citing emergency powers?” Banerjee says. He is self-censoring, not posting anything about a drama that has gripped Indian politics for weeks.
“The fact is that emergency powers are for something which is a very serious grave security implication that threatens the sovereignty of the nation, the peace of the nation,” says Banerjee, a seasoned journalist who runs The Deshbhakt (“the patriot”), a satirical YouTube channel covering politics and international affairs. Using that, the government has banned a documentary that talks about “something that happened years ago.”
The government will probably add more legislation over the next few months. Lawyers, digital rights activists, and journalists say this amounts to an attempt to reshape the Indian internet, creating a less free, less pluralistic space for the country’s 800 million users. It’s a move that could have profound consequences beyond India’s borders, they say, forcing changes at Big Tech companies and setting norms and precedents for how the internet is governed.
The Indian government had a disagreement over farm laws. Tens of thousands of farmers marched on Delhi to protest proposed agricultural reforms in late 2020 and early 2021. The movement was mirrored online, with farmers and unions using social media platforms—including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—to galvanize support. Many of the popular accounts on the social media website expressed support for the protesters. The celebrity posts supported the farmers, Jack liked them.