DHAKA — Journalists and human rights groups are demanding major amendments to a bill recently passed in Bangladesh’s Parliament, saying it will further choke constitutionally protected freedom of speech.

A powerful body of editors of leading newspapers and TV stations has officially protested the bill, called the Digital Security Act, and plans to form a human chain to protest Saturday in front of the national press club in Dhaka.

“We are moving toward a bad time. This law will hurt the media, democracy and freedom of expression,” said Khandakar Muniruzzaman, acting editor of the Bengali-language daily Sangbad and among those planning to participate in the protest Saturday.

Senior editors, journalist groups and human rights groups in and outside Bangladesh are echoing these concerns, demanding that lawmakers clarify sections of the bill they say could be wielded arbitrarily against government critics before the president signs it.

In Bangladesh, the president customarily signs anything passed by Parliament. He can send it back to Parliament, but if members think no changes are needed, it will go back to him for a signature. If the president does not sign it in six months, it automatically becomes law.

The bill would replace a previous information communication technology law, which was also criticized by journalists and human rights groups for its alleged use to crack down on dissent. Many editors and reporters have been sued for defamation under the law.

Observers say the bill is part of a broader campaign to silence critics in Bangladesh, and reflects a worrying trend in fledgling Asian democracies.

Journalists in Nepal are combating a similar law, part of an expansive rewriting of that country’s civil and criminal codes meant to define the parameters of Nepal’s new constitution.

Laws like the one recently passed in Nepal and the one pending in Bangladesh, where democracy was restored in 1990 after the military dictator was ousted, could make it more difficult for journalists to expose corruption.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who political opponents decry as an autocrat, defended the bill in Parliament last week, saying that it was meant to protect the country from propaganda.

“Journalism is surely not for increasing conflict, or for tarnishing the image of the country,” she said.

Bangladeshi journalists are taking particular umbrage with a section of the bill that authorizes up to 14 years in prison for gathering, sending or preserving classified information of any government using a computer or other digital device. The journalists say publishing such information is a way to hold officials accountable. The section evokes the sentiment of a British colonial-era law about protecting official secrets.

The bill would also authorize prison sentences of up to three years for publishing information that is “aggressive or frightening” and up to 10 years for posting information that “ruins communal harmony or creates instability or disorder or disturbs or is about to disturb the law and order situation.”

Government officials have listed incidents in recent years in which false social media posts about people disrespecting the Quran have incited violence.

Critics of the bill say existing criminal laws adequately address these concerns.

Fears of the broad reach of the bill extend beyond journalists.

Human Rights Watch said the law would be ripe for abuse, in part because it would empower police to search or arrest suspects without a court order.

“Bangladesh authorities have failed to address serious human rights violations, and when criticized, chosen to target the messenger,” spokeswoman Meenakshi Ganguly told The Associated Press.

“Bangladeshi journalists, already under pressure, will now worry about doing their job in exposing government failures,” she said.

Some critics say introducing such a law a few months before general elections, which are expected in December, could also target opposition activists and candidates.

Bangladesh’s main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, has said the bill is intended to silence its members. Party leader former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, an archrival of Hasina, is currently in jail for corruption. Her supporters say her jailing is politically motivated, an allegation authorities have denied.

An election-time government is expected to be formed in mid-October that Hasina is supposed to head in line with the constitution, but the opposition says an election under Hasina could be rigged. The opposition wants a non-partisan caretaker government to oversee the elections.

The opposition says their activists are facing thousands of politically-motivated criminal charges, but police say they are following the law, without regard to suspects’ political affiliations.

UNITED NATIONS — Two veteran Southeast Asian leaders appearing at the United Nations on Friday present a microcosm of a dynamic region enjoying rapid economic growth but struggling to fan away egregious human rights problems that follow it like a bad smell.

On the one hand is Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad, who at the grand old age of 93 has shed his authoritarian past, ousted a rival accused of massive corruption through democratic change, and re-entered the international stage with vigor.

On the other is Cambodia’s Hun Sen, who has ruled his nation with a combination of political guile and brute force for three decades, and comes to New York having won all the seats in an election after outlawing his main political opposition.

It was ever thus with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, an unwieldy mix of democracies and autocracies where politics struggles to keep pace with social change.

It’s a grouping that carefully balances its relations between the United States and China but typically has few answers to international criticism over gross rights violations in its midst as it abstains from interfering in the affairs of its member states.

This year, ASEAN is shadowed by accusations of genocide perpetrated by the military in Myanmar against Rohingya Muslims. It’s a rare instance in which the Western world and majority-Islamic nations have been united in outrage.

That has spoiled what had been one of the region’s democratic transition success stories. Just two years ago, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and former political prisoner, received a hero’s welcome when, after a historic election victory, she became the first civilian leader of her nation in five decades to address the General Assembly. This year she is notably absent and has sent a government minister in her place.

But two other familiar Southeast Asian icons are here – and their respective journeys are a telling reflection of the competing forces in their region — the popular desire for more democratic accountability and the resistance of entrenched leaders to change in political structures that they have dominated for decades.

Mahathir is returning to the U.N. after a gap of 15 years. It’s the culmination of a comeback remarkable for more than just the Malaysian prime minister’s age.

Angered by a graft scandal at the state investment fund, Mahathir emerged from political retirement and joined the opposition he had persecuted during his first, 22-year stint as leader. In the process he toppled a former protégé and the party at whose helm Mahathir oversaw the rapid development of his young country in the 1980s and 1990s while concentrating power under his increasingly authoritarian rule.

Where once he was an archetype of “Asian values” — a paternalistic view of government that prioritized economic progress over individual rights — now he’s showcasing Malaysia as a mature democracy that upholds the primacy of the rule of law.

The still-sprightly Mahathir is promising to hand over the reins of power within two years to Anwar Ibrahim, who had challenged Mahathir’s rule two decades previously and was subsequently convicted and imprisoned for years on charges of sodomy that were widely regarded as politically motivated.

Contrast Malaysia’s political renaissance with Cambodia’s descent into autocracy under Hun Sen.

He’s been in power for half of his 66 years and extended his rule last month after his party’s walkover election win. The government-influenced courts had dissolved the only credible opposition party last year, and Hun Sen says he intends to stay in office for 10 more years.

On the eve of Hun Sen’s appearance before General Assembly, a U.N. special rapporteur told the world body’s Human Rights Council that the elections had consigned Cambodia’s democracy to history for the next five years. Hun Sen’s party won every single parliamentary seat prompting rapporteur Rhona Smith to conclude: “The country is therefore de facto a single party state.”

With the possible exception of the 1997 coup that Hun Sen launched against a co-premier that brought fighting to the streets of Phnom Penh, that marks a nadir in Cambodia’s politics since its democracy was established on the back of internationally-endorsed peace accords in 1991 and massive United Nations support.

Members of the outlawed opposition party are set to protest outside U.N. Headquarters when Hun Sen speaks Friday.

While the setbacks to human rights and democracy in Cambodia and Myanmar have drawn stiff criticism from the West, and from activists inside Southeast Asia itself, the wider trend lines suggest that authoritarianism is on the upswing in the region.

Democracy has been eroded in the Philippines by the strongman tendencies of its popularly elected leader Rodrigo Duterte; Thailand has been under military rule since 2014, and elections next year are unlikely to end the army’s sway over politics. The opposition in Singapore has never had a sniff of power, and Vietnam and Laos have been under one-party rule since 1975. Only in Malaysia and the region’s largest nation, Indonesia, does democracy appear entrenched or in the ascendant.

U.S. engagement with ASEAN, which was pushed hard by the Obama administration, has slipped under President Donald Trump. That’s less a result of the region’s democratic backsliding than Washington’s withdrawal from Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal and diminished diplomatic bandwidth, as the under-staffed State Department focuses on pressing concerns like North Korea and Iran.

But both U.S. and China still view ASEAN as strategically important. It lies at a crossroads of sea lanes crucial for global trade, and with its growing markets is a crucible of investment opportunities. Southeast Asia has generally prospered over the past five decades and it remains one of the fastest-growing regions of the world, with GDP rising on average by more than 5 percent.

That will likely continue. What remains uncertain is whether Southeast Asia’s politics keep pace with the trend toward openness and connectivity among its 600 million people, or whether it resists those changes.

That’s to say, will it follow the transformative example of Mahathir, or the defensive crouch of Hun Sen?

Story: Matthew Pennington