Secular writers that use the blogosphere as their platform are now one of the most severely persecuted minorities in Bangladesh. The country has become unsafe and oppressive for atheists and agonists as well as for the followers of no organized religion and those with religious views that diverge from the orthodoxy. Three bloggers were publicly hacked to death in each of the last three months. Each time the blogger and atheist identity of these people came to the forefront because of the situation prevailing in the country. Secular bloggers, including those that were eventually murdered, have been receiving repeated death threats while going through a process of dehumanization and demonization by the larger society in the last couple of years.
The Bangladeshi society has historically been very rich in terms of the diversity of religious opinion. The country was created as a secular people’s republic through a bloody liberation war. And yet, At least four Bangladeshis have been murdered over the last two years apparently for what they wrote about religion.
Agitation by Islamist forces is not entirely new in the recent history Bangladesh and there have been attacks against secular writers before. Some were even forced to leave the country. But the Bangladeshi society has become intolerant towards its liberal and secular thinkers to a degree that is unprecedented in the history of this country. What’s more, a culture of indifference and impunity appears to have developed towards these deaths.
So, how did we come here? The grounds were being prepared for quite some time on which local and transnational factors have sown the seeds. The current crisis mostly took shape throughout the year of 2013 during which secular bloggers became targets of the Islamists in the aftermath of the Shahbag movement. To understand this crisis we must look at the events from then.
The Shahbagh movement began in February that year with the demand that the highest possible punishment for convicted war criminals of the 1971 liberation war should be ensured. In many ways this movement signaled the rise of a new and relatively mature bourgeois culture in the country. People from different classes and backgrounds turned it into a bigger movement, but the urban middle-class youths were its driving force from the beginning. The agitation was initiated by a group of bloggers and blog-based activists. Even though its primary inspiration came from a nationalistic sentiment around 1971, the protesters were able to turn it into quite a diverse and pluralistic affair within a short time. Triggered by the specific issue of war crimes trial, the movement represented the secular culture and the spirit of the liberation was from the beginning.
The movement came to be seen as a common enemy by all the Islamist groups and political parties, since its activists had clearly established a stance in favour of a secular Bangladesh derived from the spirit of the liberation war. Even though the public forum in Shahbagh mainly demanded a ban on one Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, for their culpability in the crimes against humanity committed in 1971, the broader movement was clearly positioned against the very communal religion-based politics in the country.
Shahbagh remained unopposed and unparalleled as a social and political movement until the scenario changed almost overnight with the murder of one of its participants, a blogger named Rajib Haider. Soon it was discovered that Rajib had penned under an alias some satire featuring the prophet of Islam. Some of these satires contained extreme vulgarity, which quickly became available in a conveniently designed blogsite of dubious ownership. Some pro-Jamaat news outlets printed out and spread the content of these blogposts even to the remotest villages of the country. The crudity shocked the masses and provided the basis for an Islamist movement against atheist bloggers. With this murder the political maneuverings against Shahbagh gained traction.
The atheism of certain bloggers and their choice of insult as tactic became national news, making blog synonymous to internet for the majority of the Bangladeshi population with scant knowledge about the internet, and convincing them that a blogger is an atheist who mocks their prophet. The names and other personal information of some other atheist bloggers with extracts from their writings were also published in the newspapers. Some of this exposure was politically motivated yellow journalism. This created a myth around ‘The Nastik Blogger.’ Since many of these atheist bloggers were involved in the Shahbagh movement, and ‘Shahbaghi’, blogger and ‘naastik’ i.e. atheist became the same in their minds. A make-believe battle between Islam and atheism was thus constructed.
Enter the Hefazot-e-Islam, an organization of ulamas from the Qawmi madrassahs. It came to be the main ‘pro-Islam’ force with a 13-point demand, including a blasphemy act and death penalty for atheist bloggers and a conservative and discriminatory policy towards women. Madrassah students provided manpower to the organization whereas logistics and other support were provided by the Jamaat-e-Islam, which needed to counter the campaign against their veteran leaders at Shahbagh. Jamaat was helped by Bangladesh Nationalist Party, its ally in the opposition coalition. These connections were not quite apparent when it was happening, but subsequent developments made them clear. Jamaat had its own agenda, and BNP was engaged in a deadly power struggle with the ruling Awami League. Hefazot-e-Islam served as a symbolic and ideological front for this struggle by moving to the forefront with the ‘Islam-vs-atheism battle.’
There are millions of students in thousands of Qawmi madrassahs in the country that are entirely outside the control of the government of Bangladesh. Some, especially those created with Salafi funding from the Middle East, has been known to serve as recruitment and training ground for terrorist groups. This, however, cannot be generalized to all madrassah students. Modern and secular education is still hard to avail in the villages of Bangladesh and madrassahs are a popular education option. In any case, these students became pawns in the political move. The Shahbagh movement was primarily fuelled by students of the secular education stream. The country’s divided education system had created two different sources of power and the Qawmi source of power was harnessed by BNP-Jamaat.
Shahbag was initially rife with anti-government sentiment, with protesters expressing doubts about the regime’s sincerity to allow a proper trial. However, BNP had been so mired in the Islamist politics that it no longer had the secular portfolio to exploit this opportunity. In fact it chose the opposite path. BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia condemned Shahbaghis as atheists, which made her the most influential person in the country to do so. Being the main Jamaat ally its political interests also went against shahbagh. On the other hand Awami league was able to completely co-opt the opportunity created by such a huge gathering, and cultivated a power imbalance in its favour.
Hefazat’s creation in this context appeared to serve as a balance of power vis-a-vis the sentiment and the crowd in Shahbagh. In fact subsequent developments indicate that the BNP-Jamaat alliance hoped for more use out of the Islamist agitation, namely to force the ruling party to step down. By this time the sustained campaign, ostensibly against the ‘nastik bloggers’ but directed principally toward the government, had riled up a strong sense of solidarity and victimhood in the Muslim population, some of it overlapping with the people that once went to Shahbagh. Hefazot’s programme of long march to Dhaka and a sit-down in the Motijheel area attracted a massive gathering on May 5, with people coming and sometimes being brought to Dhaka from near and far. At one point, the crowd clashed with the police and vandalized the city, turning it into a battle ground. The police and other armed forces eventually cracked down on the sit-in and chased them out of Dhaka. The clash went on till next morning and claimed several lives.
During the very same night the installations put up around the area were removed from the Shahbagh area. By then, the controversy cultivated on its stance on Islam had weakened the movement’s support base. The last remaining activists in the area were denigrated as ‘atheists’ and physically assaulted by the police who forced them to leave. Next morning the nation was already grappling over the speculations and rumours surroung the actual extent of force and the real number of death. BNP-Jamaat and hefazot did not lose a second in claiming that a massacre had taken place with thousands of dead. The government claimed 11 dead including members of the police. Independent media reports verified 30-50 dead.
The murder of the blogger acquired a very different meaning during this turmoil. Concern over the implication of such a killing was completely overtaken in the social and political arena by reactions to the offensive things he wrote, the degree of impropriety horrifying more than the murder. Hefazot played a leading role in the dehumanization of bloggers during this period. It leader, Allama Shafi, at various points declared that atheists had no right to live in Bangladesh, once going as far as claiming that it was permissible to murder atheists.
Some members of the government also participated in the process of demonization. For example, the state minister of law, Kamrul Islam, remarked that Rajib’s writings were the work of the devil. With public representatives taking such a role, the outcome of such a process is bound to be horrible. Moreover, along with Hefazot, the Awami Olama League, an AL- wing, also took to the ground with the demand of capital punishment for ‘Nastik bloggers’ in 2013. The organization’s leader, Allama Mohammad Mahbub Alam Arif, prepared a list identifying 84 people as bloggers that have been disrespectful toward the prophet. This list, submitted to a committee at the home ministry, was then published in various news outlets, and it continues to be circulated. Usually this circulation reaches a new level each time a blogger is murdered. According to some recent news reports, the Ansarullah Bangla Team, the most likely perpetrators of these murders, actually used this list to pick victims.
Over the last two years the ruling party went through a process of reconciliation with Hefazot apparentl from the material benefits provided to them by the government. Evidently, after the rise of Hefazot, the AL government understood that they cannot have the Islamists as a mortal enemy if they were to remain in power. The so-called ‘Nastik Bloggers’ became the scapegoat of this process. What’s more, this provided an opportunity to create a law to regulate the cyber space, the infamous Act 57, which served as a de-facto Blashphemy Law, but mostly gave the government a powerful tool of repression. Several bloggers were then arrested by the police, even some without any clear stance on religion. Several secular writers and Shahgagh activists from across the country were attacked and some were killed in 2013 and 2014. Continued vilification of bloggers and receding level of concern over such attacks mark the background in which the murder of three secular bloggers in three consecutive months took place. The failure of the government to arrest the criminals after the murder of a blogger and put up those arrested for a quick trial continues to endanger the lives of others.
We came to learn about the Ansarullah Bangla Team only after Razib’s murder. The police arrested most of the organization’s leaders and activists within 2013 in connection to this murder. Only from recent newspaper reports we learnt that three of them were sent to Bangladesh following their arrest in Yemen in a raid against the al-Qaeda and have been on the FBI list since 2010. These three were among the seven Ansarullah activists that were released on bail in 2014. Recently published news also suggests that most the terrorist organizations banned in the country over the years have now united under the Ansarullah banner and this organization is behind these killings. Media reports quoted by law enforcement official also suggested that the mastermind behind the killing of both Razib and Avijit have fleed the country after avijits killing. In sum, the country’s law enforcement has been more successful in branding the Ansarullah Bangla Team than they were in tackling the murderers. Unlike other Islamist terrorist organizations of the world and even Bangladesh’s own JMB in the past, Ansarullah is much less active in publicizing itself rather the law enforcement agencies and the media is doing the PR work for them. We can’t be blamed for wondering whether the organization serves as the ready-made answer in the face of questions around the performance of state security agencies in regards the spread of terrorism in Bangladesh. Neither can we be asked to ignore the likelihood of that the murders of Bangladeshi bloggers may be copycat terrorism in this age of internet-based Jihadist propaganda and increased media attention to their activities.
Recently, the Indian subcontinent chapter of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the murder of Avijit Roy and a few other secular people in Bangladesh. A twitter page by the name of ‘Ansar Bangla 8’ claimed responsibility of the latest murder, that of Ananta Bijoy Dash, on behalf of aqis. The real connection between al-Qaeda and this local group is dubious, still the fact remains that Al-Qaeda is a very fragmented group that functions around the world through franchise groups. These claims of mutual backing could very well mark the beginning of al-Qaeda as a threat to Bangladesh.
Therefore, the prime minister son, AL leader Sajib Wajed Joy, is in fact sincerely reiteratingthe AL government’s position in the last when he told the Reuters, while defending the government’s silence on the issue of blogger murders, that the prime minister cannot publicly condemn even if she personally offered condolences to Avijit Roy’s father, a life-long friend of the party, for the fear of appearing pro-atheist government to the general population. He however diverges from the truth by claiming that the government treats the killing of Avijit the same way as it treats the petrol bomb killings during the opposition’s agitation earlier this year. We regularly see Sheikh Hasina and other AL leaders and activists deliver scathing remarks against these deaths while maintaining total silence on the matter of the murdered bloggers. In reality the government is vocally against one whereas it declines to event comment on the other. We think this silence is tantamount to supporting, at least by the way of sending a message to the perpetrators. Joy’s comment then becomes nothing more than mere continuation of the very same process of demonization and dehumanization that the Bangladeshi atheists have been experiences in the hands of various quarters.
We all know the famous proclamation made by the then US president Bush where he insisted that one must be with him or against him in regards the wars he initiated, as if the people of the world really were composed two polar entities, one for the USA and another for Islamist terrorism. This version of reality however proved very useful for Bush’s politics. We find the same mirrored in the worldview of the Jihadists in ISIS and al-Qaeda, to whom the world is divided into believers and kafirs. Whether they believe it or not, this version of reality served their purpose well. Trouble begins when we see a continuation of this approach in Bangladeshi politics. The Middle East has been subjected to divisive conflicts and wars for a long time now. For the present-day Jihadists, their fight against the kafirs is the definitive struggle of the age, the ultimate fight between good and evil, and for many the sign of the ‘last age’ i.e. doomsday approaching. However in Bangladesh the discourse of division works as a tool of crude village politics. Democratic parties of feudalistic nature vie against each other for political dominance and produce discourses such as ‘atheist versus Islam’ and exploit the ‘pro-liberation versus anti-liberation’ discourse for narrow political reasons. Like Bush’s war on terror Hasina’s war on terror has been more successful in demolishing political opposition than in quelling the problem itself. Now we face a global jihadism connected by the internet where machete-wielding youths kill other youths for writing blogs critical to their faith, and each local incident, inspired by and added to external elements like al-Qaeda, perpetuates global Jihadism.
Bangladesh suffers with the import of Saudi Salafi versions of Islam to their people, and from the Salafi Jihadism that accompanies it. With Islamism and its more radical version in rise, Hasina’s regime also wants to keep the power over its subjects by any means possible. The so called secular regime lead by Sheikh Hasina and the growing Islamism is also mirrored by a so called war between secularism and Islam which has created a polarization in political and social life and might increase in the near future if nothing is done against it. Not unsurprisingly, recently a procession in protest against the murder of the blogger Ananta Bijoy Dash was foiled by activists form the student wing of awaimi league, who attacked its organizers, the official representative of Shahbagh in Sylhet. Not long after that, a rally arranged by local AL leaders from the same city demanded punishment of Dr Muhammad Jafar Iqbal, a long-time friend of the ruling party and upholder of the cause of justice for 1971 war crimes, for saying that Joy’s Reuters remark sends green signals to terrorists and murderers. Therefore the future may be even bleaker for Bangladesh’s secular writers. In a Bangladesh where a powerful opposition to the regime is non-existent for now and the Islamists are the only other stakeholders that the government needs to appease and cares about, atheists are the easiest possible scapegoat. Without any major change in domestic politics this situation is unlikelty to improve.
Parvez Alam 