Poriborton.com, one of the country’s top five online news outlets, was shut without notice on Sunday, managing editor Abu Sufian told AFP. He did not give a reason.
Officials for government agencies that regulate the internet industry denied any knowledge of the case or refused to comment.
But a Bangladesh media industry source said a government security agency ordered the closure after the website raised questions about the financing behind a newspaper advert against Moslem militancy.
Moslem groups had condemned the advert, saying it described some signs of Islamic faith as marks of radicalization.
In recent months the authorities have shut 54 news portals and websites, including that of the main opposition party, citing security reasons.
They cut access to the website of Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...-based TV station Al Jazeera in March after it published an article alleging the involvement of a senior defense official in the disappearance of three men.
The shutdown of Poriborton came just days after three prominent activists and writers were jugged
Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un!
under the country’s tough internet laws.
The arrests of poet Henry Sawpon, human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
defender Abdul Kaium, and lawyer and champion of indigenous people Imtiaz Mahmood last week prompted protests in Dhaka and outrage on social media.
First they came for the poets, and nobody cared
Sawpon and Mahmood were released on bail Thursday, but Kaium remains in detention on charges of extortion and defamation under the digital security law. He risks a jail term of up to 14 years.
Prime Minister
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
, who took office for a third straight term in January, has been accused of increasing authoritarianism and criticized for introducing draconian internet and digital security laws that many say are being used to crack down on dissent.
Sweden-based researcher and author, Tasneem Khalil, told AFP that Poriborton.com was the "latest victim of a robust system of internet censorship in Bangladesh that has been rolled out since the beginning of this year."
Khalil, a former journalist in Bangladesh who went into exile in 2007, said "security sources told me that access to poriborton.com was blocked because of a report it published that angered the Bangladeshi military intelligence agency."