Bangladesh blocks access to YouTube
09 Mar 2009
Video sharing site YouTube may have recently notched up one hundred million users a month, but Bangladesh certainly won't be helping its case in the near future. The Google-owned site has evidently been blocked in the country for hosting a recorded conversation between the newly elected prime minister and the country's powerful army officers, officials said Sunday.
Internet users were unable to access the site after it hosted the audio tape, which appeared to show angry officers shouting at Sheikh Hasina over her handling of a bloody mutiny that has threatened Bangladesh's recent return to democracy. The violence in the capital Dhaka 10 days ago left at least 74 people dead including 56 army officers who were butchered and buried in shallow graves by mutinous border guards.
The recordings cover about 40 minutes of a three-hour meeting and reveal how angry many in the military were at the government's handling of the crisis. YouTube had been blocked in the "national interest", officials said.
The chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, Zia Ahmed, said the decision to block access to YouTube, and another website, esnips, was taken because the audio recordings they hosted threatened to worsen the current situation. "The government can take any decision to stop any activity that threatens national unity and integrity," he said.
The audio clip recorded Hasina defending her decision to negotiate with the mutineers while army officials shouted and jeered, drowning her out and preventing her from speaking.
One officer at the meeting tells the prime minister: "I do not understand who gave you that idea that it has to be solved politically... rebellion has to be crushed with force.
"But you have not done that... politics is not applicable everywhere... if one tank would have gone there or a commando platoon landed there, the [BDR] would have fled like ants... but none went... all my officers were killed helplessly… and you failed to do anything."
(Also See: YouTube crosses the 100 million user mark in January)