Bangladesh may have been established as a secular country, but over the last few decades, an exceptionally virulent strain of religious fundamentalism has come to the fore. The country’s politics is now increasingly polarised between secular and non- secular entities, even as a rabid form of intolerance towards atheists and those who criticise Islam bloodies the streets. There have been threats and demands for executions of atheists. And just this year, a number of bombings wrecked the country, claimed by the government to have been done by Islamist hardliners to topple the administration in Dhaka.
And now this harsh strain of intolerance, in all its grotesque glory, is going after the softest of targets: the secular blogger. Since February, three bloggers have been gruesomely killed in busy parts of the country in broad daylight by assassins wielding machetes. There have been some arrests, but the investigation of the deaths has been found to be tardy, by and large.
The first attack occurred on 26 February, when a well-known Bangladeshi-American secular activist and blogger Avijit Roy, who was the founder of the blog, Mukto-Mona (‘free mind’)—which championed liberal secular writing in the country—was hacked to death in Dhaka while he was returning from a book fair where he had spoken. The 45-year-old was travelling with his wife, Rafida Ahmed, on a bicycle rickshaw, showing her parts of the city where he had grown up, when two assailants stopped and dragged them out onto the pavement before striking both of them with machetes. Ahmed survived the attack, although she was severely injured and her left thumb was sliced off. Her husband, the attack’s real target, did not.
Some days later, another atheist blogger, Washiqur Rahman, was hacked to death in a similar fashion in Dhaka.
On 12 May, another secular voice was silenced in Bangladesh. Ananta Bijoy Das, a 33-year-old blogger who was critical of superstitions and encouraged rational thinking and who worked as a bank manager in the city of Sylhet, was hacked to death outside his house. Das was apparently headed for work when, at about 8.30 am, a group of about four masked attackers pounced on him with machetes. They chased him down the busy street and attacked him, after which they vanished into the crowd.
Bangladeshi governments have tended to look the other way as intolerance has grown. Fuelled no doubt by the growth of hundreds of extremist religious schools established on money allegedly from Gulf countries, Bangladesh has now become one of the most dangerous countries to live in for any individual who cherishes free and rational thought. The country’s government, it seems, can do little despite the international outrage over these hate crimes. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has so far not made any public comment on them, which has bitterly disappointed those expecting swift condemnation from the leader of a party—the Awami League—that represents the left of the country’s political spectrum.
Ahmed, the only one to survive an attack, recently told Reuters in an interview that the government appears unwilling to quell these attacks. “This was well planned, choreographed—a global act of terrorism,” she was quoted as saying. “But what almost bothers me more is that no one from the Bangladesh government has reached out to me. It’s as if I don’t exist, and they are afraid of the extremists. Is Bangladesh going to be the next Pakistan or Afghanistan?”
Some years ago, a few hardline Islamists in Bangladesh had demanded blasphemy legislation to criminalise the views of bloggers they perceived as ‘anti-Islamic’. But now it seems they believe they have found a more effective method to silence voices they do not want heard.
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