On August 5, Shahidul Alam, a Bangladeshi activist and photojournalist, was arrested in the capital of Dhaka. His crime: defending the massive student demonstrations that exploded this summer over poor infrastructure and government cronyism. When students and elder residents occupied the streets, chanting “We want justice,” the government responded with indiscriminate violence.

Alam spoke out in favor of the protests on social media and in an interview with Al-Jazeera. Not long after, dozens of plainclothes government security forces raided his home, detained him for “spreading propaganda and false information against the government,” and, according to Alam, tortured him.

Officials have rejected multiple bail petitions from Alam, whose health is rapidly deteriorating (the latest petition was submitted on September 18 and has yet to be heard). The internationally renowned photographer is presently being held in jail for violating Section 57(2) of the Information and Communciations Technology Act of 2006, a law that criminalizes online dissent. “It is an open secret,” Rahnuma Ahmed, Shahidul Alam’s partner, observed last November, “that the law is selectively applied — to silence criticism of the government.” If convicted, Alam faces seven to fourteen years in prison.