Hundreds of thousands of people are protesting in Bangladesh to demand that the government introduce an anti-blasphemy law that would include the death penalty for bloggers who insult Islam.
The protest on Saturday was sparked after a group of bloggers began criticising conservative religious parties that are widely popular despite Bangladesh’s secular constitution.
Both secular and Muslim protesters have taken to the streets over the war crimes trials of leaders of the Islamic Jamaat-e-Islami party in cases related to the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Shakil Ahmed, the head of output for Ekattor television in Bangladesh, that the protests on Saturday were peaceful and had been fuelled by misinformation on both sides.
“Wrong information has been spread out by some of the activists,” said Ahmed.
Follow in-depth coverage of war crimes trials in Dhaka
Last week, four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting religious sentiment through their Internet writings against Islam.
Operators of top Bangladeshi blogs blacked out their sites on Thursday to protest against the government crackdown.
They say the government has been kowtowing to the religious activists.
Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan on Wednesday said the government had identified 11 bloggers, including the four detainees, who had hurt the religious sentiments of the nation’s majority Muslim population.
The government has blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.
Under the country’s cyber laws, a blogger or Internet writer can face up to ten years in jail for defaming a religion.
