How the Digital Security Act turned a Facebook cartoon series into a torture case
Bangladesh Satire carries one of the most severe documented cases anywhere in Asia of a government responding to cartoons with physical violence, a case that international press-freedom organizations have cited repeatedly as evidence of just how far Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act could be stretched against a single Facebook page.
Life in the Time of Corona
In March and April 2020, cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore posted a satirical series called ‘Life in the Time of Corona’ to his Facebook page, mocking the government’s handling of the pandemic alongside pointed images including Mother Nature mending Xi Jinping’s trousers while Mohammed bin Salman waited his turn. Paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion officers picked him up from his home before dawn on May 5, 2020, on a complaint accusing him and ten others of spreading rumors and misinformation about the coronavirus.
Torture in Custody
Kishore told reporters after his eventual release that he was beaten severely enough to rupture an eardrum and damage his eyesight, and that interrogators questioned him for hours while projecting his own cartoons on a screen, asking who each caricature represented. He spent 10 months in detention, denied bail repeatedly, before finally being released in March 2021 on health grounds — a release that came just days after his co-accused, writer Mushtaq Ahmed, died in custody after being denied bail six times.
International Condemnation, Limited Consequence
Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and PEN America all called for the charges against Kishore to be dropped and for Bangladesh to repeal the Digital Security Act entirely; Kishore himself filed an anti-torture case that prompted a court-ordered investigation, though authorities publicly denied any torture took place. The law was later renamed the Cyber Security Act in 2023, with press-freedom groups noting the rebrand did little to change how it continued to be used.
A Chilling Effect Beyond One Case
Journalists and cartoonists working in Bangladesh since Kishore’s case have described a genuine chilling effect across the industry, with the specific mechanics of his detention — predawn arrest, projected cartoons used as interrogation material, months without bail — functioning as a widely understood warning about exactly what satirizing the government’s pandemic response could cost.
How the Law Actually Gets Used
The Digital Security Act’s broad, vaguely worded provisions against spreading rumors or misinformation have given Bangladeshi authorities wide discretion to treat satirical content exactly the same as straightforward political dissent, with courts showing little apparent interest in the distinction between a joke and a direct factual claim once a case reaches trial.
A Case That Became a Reference Point
Kishore’s detention is now regularly cited by press-freedom researchers and organizations including Cartoonists Rights Network International and Cartooning for Peace as a defining example of the risks facing political cartoonists specifically, distinct from journalists more broadly, given how directly his interrogation focused on the content and meaning of individual drawings rather than any written reporting.
Satire That Named Names Beyond Government
Kishore’s targets weren’t limited to government officials alone; one of his cartoons specifically mocked a private bank chairman with close government ties, illustrating how Bangladeshi satire under this legal environment risks prosecution not just for criticizing politicians directly, but for satirizing the broader network of business figures closely aligned with those in power.
What Happened to the Law’s Name, If Not Its Function
The 2023 rebrand from Digital Security Act to Cyber Security Act was widely read by press-freedom organizations as a cosmetic change rather than a substantive reform, with the underlying provisions used against Kishore remaining largely intact under the new name — a pattern that has left Bangladeshi cartoonists and journalists with little practical reassurance that a similar case couldn’t happen again.
Cartoonists Elsewhere Took Notice
Kishore’s case drew direct solidarity statements from cartoonist advocacy organizations working across multiple countries, tying his treatment into a broader international conversation about the specific vulnerability cartoonists face compared with text-based journalists — a drawing, unlike an article, can be projected on a screen and interrogated line by line in a way that makes the artist’s intent feel uniquely exposed. A drawing carries a kind of undeniable specificity that makes deniability considerably harder to claim once an interrogator has it projected in front of you, line by line.
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Visit the South Asia Satire hub for regional comparison, or our Malaysia Satire page for the closest parallel in how a single cartoonist’s case became a defining national press-freedom story. That specificity is precisely why the case has become the reference point it now is.
A Note on Sourcing This Page
Nearly every detail on this page traces back to reporting from BenarNews, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty International, and PEN America, all of whom covered Kishore’s case in real time and continued following it through his release — this is one of the better-documented cartoonist cases anywhere on this site precisely because so many organizations treated it as a priority.
Bangladesh Satire on catchpenny.asia
Visit the South Asia Satire hub for regional comparison, or our Malaysia Satire page for the closest parallel in how a single cartoonist’s case became a defining national press-freedom story. That specificity is precisely why the case has become the reference point it now is.