Sadeq Khan
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her ministers have been loudly claiming all the credit for breaking the back of covert “jihadist” militancy in Bangladesh. At the same time her administration has been ascribing the sins of many unresolved or unrestrained antisocial or criminal incidents to known or unknown so-called “jihadists”, implicating, persecuting and prosecuting opposition “BNP-Jamaat” leaders and activists in many acts of felony alleging the latter’s collusion with “jihadists” and with Islamic militancy.
The contradiction in and overkill of such line of double-edged propaganda may have boomeranged both within and without the bounds of the nation-state. Over the last three months, the failure of Sheikh Hasina’s government in containing hate-crimes by “Islamic” assassins targeting blasphemous bloggers have been drawing sharp criticism by global media as well as Western governments and non-government organisations. In a pointed rebuke, The New York Times wrote an editorial on March 5 this year: “Bangladeshi militant Islamist group Ansar Bangla 7 wrote on Twitter after the murder of Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death in Dhaka last Thursday: ‘The target was an American citizen. 2 in 1.’ Two for one because the author and blogger Avijit Roy was an avowed atheist and an American citizen.
Political dialogue recalled
‘#Revenge + #Punishment,’ the Tweet concluded. In the twisted minds of the militants, cleaving a writer’s head with a machete is fitting punishment for expressing views they do not like, and killing an American citizen is some kind of sick revenge for the United States’ actions in Afghanistan and Syria.
“Bangladesh’s laws do not help. The secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has arrested and tried bloggers for blasphemy under Section 57 of the country’s 2006 Information and Communication Technology Act, which bars disseminating any information that ‘causes to hurt or may hurt religious belief or instigate against any person or organization.’ Political polarization between Mrs. Hasina’s Awami League government and the Bangladesh National Party’s leader, Khaleda Zia, is also contributing to the crisis. Alarmed, the United Nations has called for dialogue between the opposing parties.”
The BNP-Jamaat leadership of the 20-party Opposition alliance, on the other hand, claims that covert, JMB Islamic militancy took shape in Bangladesh precisely during Sheikh Hasina’s first government of 1996-2001 indulged by nepotism of some of her own faithful, and action against Islamic extremists was effectively planned and executed indeed during the succeeding BNP-Jamaat government of 2001-2006. The task of elimination of JMB organisation in Bangladesh was completed by the one-eleventh quasi-military government in the next two years. In other guises, Islamic militancy is on the rise again as in her “desperate” scheme to silence the “legitimate” opposition and earn “legitimacy” for her unrepresentative government, Sheikh Hasina has been conducting a campaign of “false” propaganda and “state terror” to cripple BNP-Jamaat camp and in effect sparing politically in significant hard criminals and Islamic extremists who do not challenge her power. Such allegations by the BNP-Jamaat camp-Sin Western capitals but also in the neighbourhood.
ADSA on killing of bloggers
Ahead of Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Bangladesh for 36-hours of presence in Dhaka over June 6 and 7, the Indian government funded Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) published commentary May 21 written by strategic analyst Smruti S. Pattanaik. Under the title “Bangladesh: Hacking Free Thinking to Death”, the IDSA comment noted inter-alia:
“On 12 May 2015, Bangladesh witnessed the murder of the third blogger in less than a month. The three killed so far are part of a list of 84 liberals that Bangladeshi fundamentalists have identified for elimination. The latest victim was Anant Bijoy Das, a blogger and the organiser of Sylhet city’s Gonojagoron Mancha – a liberal platform that emerged during the Shahbag movement. Das was a contributor to a local publication Jukti. He had also contributed to Mukto-mona, which was founded by the US born Avijit Roy. Roy too was earlier hacked to death in a similar fashion on 26 February 2015 for his criticism of Islam and for highlighting certain prejudices associated with that religion. Subsequently, another blogger, Washiqur Rahman, who was critical of religion and had posted on his Facebook page I am Avijit, words cannot be killed after Roy’s killing was also hacked to death in broad daylight on 30 March.
“Though these three cases in less than three months demonstrate a pattern, the killing of individuals engaging in ‘riddah or irtidad’ (apostasy) and “tauheen-e-risalat” (blasphemy) by fundamentalists in not new:
Poet Shamsur Rahman was targeted in 1999 by the Harakat ul Jihadi Islami (HuJi) for his writings. Writer Taslima Nasreen, well-known author of “Lajja”, was hounded out of the country.
Writer Humayun Azad was attacked for his satirical novel ‘Pak Saar Jamin’ in 2004. Rajib Haider, a blogger, was hacked to death in front of his house in 2013 for posts that were considered offensive to Islam and its Prophet.
Asif Mohiuddin was stabbed in 2013 for similar postings in various websites.
Professor Shafiul Islam of Rajshahi University was hacked to death in November 2014 for banning students from wearing the full-face veil in his class room and examination hall.
Capitalizing on peoples’ anger
The Ansarullah Bangla Team 2 (ABT 2), which claimed responsibility for the killing of Professor Islam, wrote on its website that ‘Our Mujahideens have today murdered an apostate who had prohibited female students from wearing veils in his department and the classrooms.’ Similar postings have appeared after the killings of Avijit and Ananta. Avijit’s killing was initially claimed by the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT). But almost a month later, the Al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for his murder. Thereupon, the twitter account of ABT 8 asked journalists to ‘Use#AQIS while reporting about the killing. Don’t use Ansar Bangla 8 again.’
“The fact that it (Bangladesh) is a Muslim majority country makes the task of political parties espousing secularism difficult. Electoral politics prevent them from taking a clear stance on the place of religion given the historical context of the country’s evolution. This ambiguity is reflected in the constitution, which professes secularism on one hand and acknowledges Islam as the state religion on the other. Therefore, even while participating in the Shahbag movement, a majority of Bangladeshis disapproved of what was being written in various blogs at the peak of the movement.
Subsequent killings only reveal that fundamentalists were waiting to resurface and capitalise on the people’s anger against such bloggers. The hacking of the three bloggers in full public view attests to the fact that Islamists are growing bolder by the day.
“There were no protests or hartals to arrest the killers. Civil society groups could only organise a candle light march; and only token protests were organised by the Ganajagaran Mancha. Both the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) have been cautious about not getting dragged into the controversy and into the fight between self-confessed atheists and self-defined believers.
“Liberal space shrinking”
“Panicked by the agenda of the Islamists, which ranged from the demand for a blasphemy law to implementation of the Sharia, the Hasina government blocked several blogs and arrested bloggers under the newly passed Information Technology Act. After jumping in to protect Islam from the blasphemers, the government now finds it impossible to take action against their murderers or even adopt measures to promote a culture of tolerance.
“Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajib Wajid Joy, who is also an adviser on Information and Communication Technology Affairs, even defended the government’s and the prime minister’s silence by stating that ‘the political situation in Bangladesh is too volatile for her to comment publicly’ and that the government was ‘walking a fine line’ and would ‘not want to be seen as atheists’. He further added that because the opposition plays the ‘religion-card against us relentlessly, we can’t come out strongly…’. For its part, the BNP exploited the opportunity by criticising the government for not protecting Avijit. “The liberal space is shrinking in Bangladesh because of many reasons: governmental apathy and inaction; the gradual erosion of the state structure through the politics of patronage; the undermining of the judiciary; restrictions on and persecution of the media; and the playing of the politics of religion.
“But with both political parties eager to placate Islamists and hesitant to condemn the perpetrators of crimes in the name of Islam, Bangladesh is slowly and surely moving towards a perilous future.”
Where will the destitute go?
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed her harsh disdain last week of economic migrants from Bangladesh who join with stateless Rohingyas to fall prey to human traffickers and risk death by thuggery in transit camps in the jungles of Thailand or by drowning at sea from drifting boats refused landing by coast guards of Malaysia and Indonesia. The Prime Minister in effect said that money craze of economic migrants seeking opportunities abroad was bringing shame to our country and they would be penalised.
Her critics say that under her lopsided policies and maladministration, the haplessness of the extreme poor has reached the level of stateless Rohingyas while crony capitalists and coercive rent seekers in every walk of life are flourishing at the cost of the misery of the common man. Where will the destitute go?
Others on the fence observe, to be sure the faux pas of some of the ruling party leaders and ministers crying wolf of extremist menace in Bangladesh and claiming justification of “cross-fire” culture are damaging the image of our nation-state than the pitiful stories of “Bengali” emigrants huddling in detention camps or found in mass graves in Thai forests or deemed lost at sea.
Source: Weekly Holiday