Historical perspectives in confronting polarization

According to the existing International human rights laws and points of view, every human being has equal and inherently natural human rights. But modern concepts of human rights did not come in to existence suddenly, rather they were developed through historical experiences of people living in different parts of the world for thousands of years; to be more precise, they were developed mostly from the historical experiences of Europe. Human beings from Bangladesh or many other countries did not go through the same historical experiences and developments of Europe. It took hundreds of years for Europe to develop these concepts and to have a society that honors and guards them. Experiences of religious wars and inquisitions, deaths and suffering of millions have given birth to these ideas of inherent human rights in Europe. These concepts were solidified through grass root mass movements like French revolution. In Europe, the idea of human rights developed from the bottom. On the contrary, In a country like Bangladesh, it has been a development from the top, motivated by lessons learned through colonial and post-colonial experiences and not well entrenched in the society. Even today, most people in Bangladesh do not have any idea about many of these basic human rights. Many do not care about or understand the importance of fundamental rights such as free speech while they struggle every day for their right to live or their right for livelihood or education. Many of you will agree that categorization of human rights is not an easy task, and what I learned from my experiences is that all human rights are at the end of the day political rights. People need to politically fight for their rights.

Future may be even bleaker for Bangladeshi secular writers

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.