The atmosphere has “reached a dangerous level,” says the brother of the late Avijit Roy.
Kamran Reza Chowdhury/Dhaka
The climate for freedom of secular thought in Bangladesh remains bleak a decade after religious zealots murdered blogger Avijit Roy as he left a literary festival in Dhaka, family members, researchers and human rights advocates said.
The killing of the Bangladeshi-born American citizen in February 2015 was the first in a spate of murders of secular writers and intellectuals at the hands of Muslim extremists that year and in 2016.
“The current atmosphere for secular thought in Bangladesh is absent. Ten years ago, the condition for secular thoughts was very bad,” Abul Kashem Fazlul Huq, a retired professor at Dhaka University, told BenarNews.
“Blogger Avijit Roy was killed for promoting secular thoughts, my son Dipan was killed for publishing his book. What fault did they have,” Kashem said, referring to his son, Faisal Arefin Dipan, who was fatally attacked in October 2015.
Ten years on, the South Asian country is still unsafe for the secular community because the threat from violent extremism remains alive despite last year’s fall of the authoritarian government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, according to observers.
It had cracked down hard on Islamic militants by launching a deadly counter-terrorism campaign in July 2016, in the wake of an overnight siege of the Holey Artisan café in Dhaka, where 24 people, many of them foreigners, were slaughtered by Muslim extremists.
But the Hasina government executed a “wrong” policy of countering militancy and terrorism that did not root out the problem, according to one researcher.
“During Sheikh Hasina’s rule, the law enforcement agencies conducted operations to kill militants and extremists to get applause, cash incentives and awards from the government,” Abuld Kalam Azad told BenarNews.
Since Bangladesh’s independence in the early 1970s, some leftist politicians and controversial intellectuals had attacked faith-based parties through anti-religion books and comments while propagating secularism, making the term “secular” controversial, according to Kashem, Dipan’s father.
“Their anti-religion postures put the faith-based parties in existential threat. As a means of survival, those parties propagated secularism as anti-religion,” Kashem said.
He noted that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father who was Bangladesh’s founding leader and had led the independence movement to break away from Pakistan, defined secularism as a system where the state would not be a party to any religion.
“But the idea was not popularized,” Kashem said. “Now, pro-Islamic parties dominate the political landscape,” he said.
‘Situation has deteriorated further’
On the night of Feb. 26, 2015, extremists who were later sentenced to death, fatally hacked with machetes Roy as he was exiting the Ekushey Book Fair in Dhaka. Roy had written books about freedom of secular thoughts and freedom of expression. His wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, was seriously injured in the attack.
On Oct. 31, 2015, extremists killed Dipan, owner of the publishing house Jagriti where Roy’s books were printed.
“Definitely, the previous atmosphere was not conducive to freedom of secular thought and freedom of expression. But the situation has deteriorated further and now it has reached a dangerous level,” Anujit Roy, Avijit’s brother, told BenarNews.
Anujit Roy said he did not know if any organization would mark the 10th anniversary because of security concerns.
“If not, then we the family members will observe his death anniversary at our house,” he said, noting that fears of violence had intensified since Hasina lost power.
No support for secularism
Maulana Mohiuddin Rabbani, a vice president of Hefazat-e-Islam, a conservative Islamic group, told BenarNews that religion was needed in Bangladesh.
“Secularism was imported to Bangladesh from India. But we don’t support or promote secularism. We believe that as the majority of Bangladesh are Muslims, the state religion must be Islam,” he said.
“But people from all religions can practice their respective religions as guaranteed by Islam,” Rabbani said.
In recent months since an interim government took office in Bangladesh, religious zealots have obstructed several traditional cultural activities across the country.
In late January, Islamists vandalized the venue hosting a female football match in Tilakpur, a sub-district in northern Joypurhat.
Islamists were blamed for vandalizing a book stall on Feb. 10, during the month-long Ekushey Book Fair, for displaying a book of exiled Bangladeshi secular writer Taslima Nasrin. The Islamists alleged the book promoted atheism.
Three days later, Sohel Hasan Galib was arrested and sent to jail for allegedly hurting religious sentiments through his poetry.
On Feb. 12, zealots forced organizers to postpone the death anniversary of mystic poet Lalon in Modhupur, in Tangail district.
A group in Bhuapur, in the same district, vandalized shops selling flowers for a spring festival on Feb. 15, leading organizers to scrap a scheduled kite festival in adjacent Gopalpur subdistrict.
How Hasina handled militants
Kalam Azad, the researcher and co-author of the first book on female militants in Bangladesh, said that the government under Hasina had wrongly accused many people of militancy.
“In my research, I found at least 50% of the alleged male and one-third of female militants were innocent victims. They were falsely implicated in terrorism charges with ill motives,” he told BenarNews.
“After Hasina’s fall, some groups have been trying to propagate that all alleged militants and extremists were innocent. But this is also not true,” Azad said.
The researcher noted that people were panicking.
“I think the atmosphere for freedom of expression, freedom of thought and secular thought is not conducive right now due to existing bad political conditions,” he said.
A former police inspector-general noted that the strategy for countering terrorism and violent extremism was flawed during Hasina’s tenure.
“The alleged militants were killed or arrested and imprisoned indefinitely without following proper judicial procedure,” Nur Mohammad told BenarNews.
“After the fall of her government, alleged militants or extremists were released,” he said. “Now the question is whether we are free from the threat of violent extremism. The answer is, if there is no patronization, the idea will meet a natural death.”
Meanwhile, a spokesman for interim government leader Muhammad Yunus said there was no room for violent extremism, adding that the government had anti-terrorism, counter terrorism, transnational crime units and other agencies working to counter violent extremism.
“We believe Bangladesh must have an atmosphere where both secular or non-secular people can express their opinion without any fear or persecution. At present, people can express their views without any fear. We want to establish a truly inclusive society free from fear and prejudice,” Shafiqul Alam told BenarNews.
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