Internet Disconnection as a Risk to Cross-Border Human Rights
Zinnat Sultana, Miss. Rokeya Akter, Tanveer Ehsanur Rahman, Hasan Shahid Ferdous, Teresa Wulandari, M Ashraful Amin, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Sharifa Sultana
Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1-7, ISBN: 9798400713958
Abstract
One of the biggest movements organized by Gen-Z is the July-August 2024 quota reformation movement in Bangladesh. During this movement, the government in power of Bangladesh shut down the internet nationwide for ten consecutive days to suppress the voices of people and disconnect them from the rest of the world. Our ongoing project investigates the movement and analyzes this crisis. We are currently conducting interviews with Bangladeshi people living outside of Bangladesh to understand the trouble they faced due to the internet shutdown and found that their human rights were violated in multiple ways. The participants informed us about how propaganda spread, which was impossible to verify due to the internet shutdown, resulting in more chaos and confusion during that time and possibly leading to more damage to the nation and its resources. We present the findings and discuss possible directions for HCI.