Hasina stands between us and the extremists
by MASUDA BHATTI
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina at Number 10, Downing Street, London, at a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron on January 27, 2011 PHOTO/Wikipedia
Hacking down four atheist bloggers in the last two years brought Bangladesh to the world’s headlines. In a couple of days, there may be another name in these headlines. A spokesman from the Bangladeshi security agency says that there are not only bloggers, but writers and secular politicians also on the hit-list of Islamist groups.
It seems as if the country is no longer safe for free-thinkers. At least, that is what my Facebook friends are thinking. And nowadays, I choose these friends with great caution as I myself have been attacked online since I started writing for Bangladeshi newspapers. I cannot begrudge my friends their anxiety about my security.
In February 2015, a Bangladeshi-US atheist blogger was hacked to death and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina could not give condolences to the family in public because of the volatile political situation in Bangladesh. Mentioning this in an interview with Reuters, the son of the prime minister and advisor, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, said there were people who always wanted to prove that AL was atheistic.
In Bangladesh, this is the worst-case scenario for any party contesting an election, where voters are motivated by the religious actions taken by political parties. Many feathers were ruffled at Joy’s comments, and many think this will encourage the Islamists to kill even more.
To understand Mr Sajeeb Wazed Joy’s stance, we have to go back to the country’s past. Achieving independence from Pakistan in 1971 was an unprecedented event for the Bengali nation. Soon after, the founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, presented a constitution praised by the democratic and secular world for including four principles: Bengali Nationalism, democracy, socialism, and secularism.
He also banned the political parties based on religion such as Jamaat-e-Islami, who not only opposed the country’s independence, but was also involved in the genocide — together with the Pakistani military — of 3 million Bengalis and the rape of 200,000 Bengali women. Sheikh Mujib was, of course, later brutally killed along with his family members, except for his two daughters who were in Germany at the time.
After his death, however, Bangladesh started running exactly as Mujib had not envisioned it. The first military ruler of Bangladesh, General Ziaur Rahman, changed the four principles of the constitution by military ordinance. He threw out secularism, socialism, and Bengali Nationalism from the constitution, and gave the permission to religion-based political parties to do politics in the name of multi-party democracy.
Fighting for free expression in an age of death squads
by MAHMUD RAHMAN
The death squads of fundamentalist Islam have taken the life of yet another Bangladeshi blogger. This time it was Ananta Bijoy Das in Sylhet who also edited a rationalist journal named Jukti. Some months back, Avijit Roy and Washiqur Rahman were killed in in Dhaka while Rafida Ahmed Bonya survived with serious injuries.
The champions of death promise more. Two years ago, the Hefazat-e-Islam, an Islamist movement based in madrassas, delivered to the Home Ministry a list of 84 atheist bloggers they wanted punished for blasphemy. The crime of those included: they used words that offended the self-appointed guardians of Islam. Despite their belief in an all-powerful Allah, the death squads were not ready to leave judgement in his hands – what this says about their own belief in a supreme being is a contradiction they never address.
Though narrow and frequently precarious, there has long been room for free thinking and unbelief in Bangladesh. But with the country entering a time when more and more people are murdered for what they think and speak, I fear for the land of my birth. A certain opening that has existed for 20 years is closing.
Fundamental differences
The latest killing has brought forth a range of reactions.
Among those who knew Ananta and his work or value free speech, there is sadness for sure but, beyond that, considerable dismay at the realisation that the Bangladeshi state, despite claims to a certain kind of secularism, cannot protect the lives of those who hold dissident beliefs about religion.
There are others, though, who believe the bloggers went too far and that if they stop intruding into public space, peace will return.
That hope, however, is undermined by the bloodlust among many who celebrate these deaths. Right after Ananta’s murder, his Facebook page was riddled with comments applauding his death. There have also been comments and posts that pledge death for other so-called apostates, such as Shias or Ahmadiyyas. It may be hard to believe, but there are people who believe today’s Pakistan, with its routine killing fields, should be the future of Bangladesh.
When an Islamist takes a cleaver to the head of someone for what they think, there seem to be people who are attracted to this, who say to themselves that they want to be the kind of men who step into those shoes. But isn’t it the case that there are perhaps more humans who recoil from such cruelty, asking, if this be religion, I want none of it?
Scroll.In for more