WASHINGTON --
As four
bloggers in Bangladesh have been arrested in recent days, others in the
country's blogging community worry that they could be next and accuse
politicians of trying to suppress people's freedom to organize and speak out in
order to preserve their own political power.
Last week,
police detained four bloggers in the capital city of Dhaka who have been
critical of the government's pro-Islamist stance. Home Minister M.K. Alamgir
warned that the government has a list of seven more "atheist
bloggers" who will soon be targeted.
Alamgir has
not revealed who the seven bloggers are on his allegedly "atheist"
list, although several groups of Muslim fundamentalists have named names. The
latter lists are currently available on social media, with one identifying 84
bloggers.
The Huffington
Post reached out to seven prominent Bangladeshi bloggers, all on the Islamists'
lists. The three who replied said they were concerned that they could be
targeted.
The bloggers
described an ongoing fight between Islamist forces that want to drive the
country in a religiously fundamentalist direction and the online journalists
giving a voice to those Bangladeshi who want a more open, tolerant society.
"Bloggers
have become the voice of people in recent days in Bangladesh," said one of
the bloggers, who requested anonymity out of fear for his safety and who is
currently staying in an undisclosed location. "Most of the bloggers don't
belong to any political party, they boldly criticize any oppression and
injustice. So, this freedom became a headache for mainstream politicians, and
now they have started to control freedom of speech in the internet, especially
in blog and social media."
Another
blogger, Baki Billah, told The Huffington Post that in the last few days,
sources at various government offices have warned him that he may be arrested.
At this point,
Billah said he knows that anything could happen, considering that one of those
already arrested is Russell
Parvez, a prominent voice among Bangladeshi bloggers.
"How
ridiculous it is to arrest one of the most promising writers in the country
apparently for no reason," said Billah. He also contended that Parvez
"is being tortured in remand."
Parvez, who
received his master's degree in physics from the University of Connecticut, is
well-known for his analytical pieces on religion, politics, fundamentalism and
science. He spent more than five years building his reputation, and newcomers
consider Parvez a first-generation blogger who has paved the way for others.
The question
that continues to nag at the bloggers is why the center-left coalition
government, which has been in power since 2009, suddenly decided to focus on
the bloggers and arrest four of its critics.
Billah
believes that the whole situation is being manipulated by Jamaat-e-Islami, an
Islamist party that is currently out of power but still wields significant
influence, for its own political purposes. Jamaat opposed Bangladesh's
independence from Pakistan in 1971 and perpetrated war crimes listed by the
Guinness Book of Records as among the five deadliest 20th-century killings.
Right now, the
International Crimes Tribunal, which was set up by the current government to
deal with war crimes, is trying nine men -- including seven members of
Jamaat-e-Islami. Billah charged that Jamaat is trying to foil those trials by
causing public disorder over the issue of religion.
Many
supporters of the bloggers argue that the country's two major political parties
-- the Awami League, which controls the coalition government, and the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) -- are going along with Jamaat-e-Islami's
agenda out of fear of having their own religious commitments questioned.
The bloggers'
arrests came in the wake of threats from another, little-known Islamist party
called Hefazat-e Islam that threatened to march toward Dhaka on April 6 to
press for "punishing all atheist bloggers." The blogging community
had ignited the ire of this group by launching a mass protest advocating the
separation of politics and religion, as well as justice for war crimes victims.
The protest began on Feb. 5, the day a third Jamaat leader was sentenced to a
life term by the International Crimes Tribunal. Two others had already been
sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.
The protest,
established in one of Dhaka's busiest intersections, Shahbagh, has continued
non-stop and is now being called the "Shahbagh movement."
Public
awareness of the bloggers has also grown, particularly since the assassination
of Rajib Haider, a blogger who was hacked to death in front of his residence on
Feb. 15. Five young men confessed
to murdering Haider, saying they had been instructed by a leader of
Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat.
The
assassination was followed by an anonymous smear
campaign against
bloggers like Haider, sometimes with doctored
websites containing
posts that defame Islam.
But the
bloggers are clear on whom they blame the deteriorating situation.
"Both
Awami League and BNP rehabilitated Jamaat in post-Independence Bangladesh for
their political gains. These parties allowed Jamaat to abuse religion only to
keep their pathway to power cleared," said Billah.
In the 42 years
of Bangladesh's existence, the Shahbagh movement is the first time people have
to come together in significant numbers to demand a ban on Jamaat for
perpetrating war crimes in the 1971 war, and to call for the separation of
religion from politics in order to build a secular society.
"Awami
League found it difficult to deal with a bunch of these free-thinkers showing
urban middle-class youth the ground to organize," Billah told HuffPost via
email.
The Awami
League, which promised in the last election that the war criminals from 1971
would be put on trial this time, tried to penetrate and control the Shahbagh
movement but failed, according to Parvez Alam, another blogger accused of being
an "atheist" by some fundamentalist groups.
Alam has been
involved in Shahbagh as the coordinator of the "Jatiyo sarthe blogger
online activist forum," a platform that helped organize several
anti-government protests in the last few years. One of the arrested bloggers,
Asif Mohiuddin, was also a member of this forum until he was stabbed
by fundamentalists in
January.
"The
government is well aware of the revolutionary character of any mass gathering.
The mainstream political parties are afraid to face such a challenge. Shahbagh
has overturned the dominance of the ruling Awami League and major opposition
BNP and the rule of political dynasties as well," said Alam.
The bloggers
have vowed not to give in to the pressure, saying that now is the time to
finish the promise of the 1971 revolution in which 3 million individuals died
to break away from Pakistan and its religion-based government. And they are
joined by thousands of Shahbagh protesters from all walks of life, especially
young people.
"To
me, this is a fight between old and new. If old is defeated, the world will see
a new Bangladesh," said Billah.
First
published in the Huffington Post, April 9, 2013
Emran Hossain is a journalist with BDNews24.com in Bangladesh. He is a 2013 Daniel Pearl fellow at The Huffington Post as part of a program with the Alfred Friendly Press Partners. He c ould reached at emran.hossain@huffingtonpost.com
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