Too little, too late to protect Hindus in sectarian violence

Slain Dilip Das left behind his wife Rupa Das, daughter Priya Das and son Partha Das - Photo: Saleem Samad

SALEEM SAMAD

Law enforcement’s lack of response during the Cumilla riots lead to greater escalation

Dilip Das, 62, was a commercial washerman for the Sadar Hospital and other clinics in Cumilla. For nearly 30 years, he laundered hospital bed sheets and linens.

When pedestrians rushed Dilip to the emergency department of the hospital, he was not attended to. His family shifted him to the 250-bed government hospital, where again he was left unattended. For six hours, he did not get medical care in Cumilla hospitals. His condition deteriorated as his forehead wound was bleeding.

Dilip’s wife Rupa Das did not expect to hear the tragic news in her life. The sky had fallen on her head. She was not aware that rioters had gone berserk in the city.

At Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the surgeons and physicians struggled for eight days to treat the patient who had gone into a coma from a fatal brain haemorrhage. His daughter Priya Rani Das, 25, said the brain surgeons had twice operated upon him in Dhaka.

She also said that he was struck with full force with a metal bar by Islamic vigilantes, which badly fractured his forehead skull, and he sank into a coma. She dashed from her house at Thana Road, accompanied by Ruma Das, sister of Dilip.

The armed vigilantes had taken positions in the streets and the intersection became dangerous for Hindus to venture out. She and Ruma were desperate to reach the hospital.

The vigilantes, mostly teenagers with machetes, bamboo sticks, and metal bars, threatened them to cut them into pieces. They yelled at her -- how dare they desecrate the Holy Quran?

Ruma told the youths, “You can kill us, but we need to go to the hospital for the emergency treatment of my elder brother.” Rupa had no clue about what had happened at Nanua Dighirpar Puja mandap in the morning when all hell had been let loose in Cumilla.

On that ominous day, Dilip went to Rajeshwari temple in Manoharpur to clean the premises as a volunteer. He told his wife not to cook for him as he would have prasad (religious offering of food) at the temple. At noon, he was walking towards Darogabari Mazar, a tomb of a Sufi saint, to clean the premises. He was caught in the violence near the temple. The vigilantes caught him and, with a metal bar, fractured his skull.

The residents of the city had not experienced such rage in 50 years, since the genocidal campaign by marauding the Pakistan military in March 1971.

While Dilip was fighting for his life in the hospital at Dhaka, the neighbours offered milad and dua mehfil (prayers) in at least two mosques and several Muslim homes for his early recovery. The neighbours mourned his death.

He was adored by thousands for his volunteerism at temples, mosques, and the shrines of Sufi saints. He had respect for all religions, but had given his life to the brutalities of Islamic vigilantes with political clout.

When the mobs and mobsters roamed the towns in Cumilla and Chowmuhani, Noakhali for several hours, the police were squarely blamed for the slow response.

Scores of survivors, Durga Puja committee members, and priests of temples claimed to have called the civil administration, police stations, 999 emergency police helpline, and even ruling Awami League leaders, but unfortunately, nobody responded.

Members of the Human Rights Alliance Bangladesh, Research and Empowerment Organization (REO), and Nipironer Birudhey Shahbag, a sister organization of Gonojagaron Mancho, visited the place and met Achintya Das Tito, secretary of the Cumilla Mahanagar (city) Puja Committee. He was an eyewitness to the desecration of the Nanua Dighirpar Puja. He had frantically called the police chief, the police station, civil administration, and Awami League leaders for help to stop the mayhem.

Their conspicuous silence was questioned by the media, civil society, rights groups, and Hindu leaders.

Interestingly, at one end of the large pond, a stone’s throw away was the home of Cumilla City Mayor Monirul Haque Sakku and, on the other corner, lived ruling party MP AQM Bahauddin Bahar. None came forward for decisive action.

“The desired help never came. It came only then when everything was lost to sectarian violence,” he lamented.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 2 November 2021

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

Islamists Challenges Secularism in Bangladesh

People have no jurisdiction to judge others on their religious views

Is this tolerance? Photo Credit: SYED ZAKIR HOSSAIN

SALEEM SAMAD
A series of low-intensity violence on the issue of blasphemy was recently raised by radicalized Muslims against Hindus, Buddhists, and others, which is nothing new in Bangladesh.

If the violent behavior by the “lords of hate” is analyzed, it could be determined that these occurrences have an identical pattern of violence, as if those are woven in one string of hate against humanity.

In the fairly recent incident in Bhola in the coastal district, the acts of violence were instigated by rumormongers citing fake Facebook exchanges, which were deemed blasphemous only by the Islamic zealots.

Despite the distances from one occurrence to another, the typical pattern of violence has been observed in Barisal, Brahmanbaria, Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Gaibandha, Gopalganj, Ramu, Rangpur, Santhia (Pabna), Satkhira, Sunamganj -- and the list appears to keep growing.

All the incidents falsely accused person(s) insulting Islam, the Qur’an, or Prophet Muhammad -- soon after, Hindu and Buddhist households were looted, vandalized, and set ablaze, while temples were desecrated.

Hate speech by zealots is widely available on YouTube and Facebook, with tens of thousands of views on social media. The videos do not hesitate to despise the defenders of human rights and advocates of secularism, especially the mainstream media.

The hate speech by the clergies indoctrinate madrasa students, and millions of disciples of Islamic evangelists paradoxically have a similar message of hate against secular Muslims and Muslim sects.

Of late, their demands to the authorities are coincidentally the same, as if the storyboard is prepared under one roof, by one person, and written with one pen.

Closely analyzing their statements, the Islamists are no more a religious group -- they have a clear political agenda. The bigots with a political agenda, means they are bidding for the return of political Islam. This will severely dent our almost five-decade-long traditional culture of tolerance, democracy, and secularism.

The zealots demand that the government should enact a blasphemy law, with a provision of a maximum penalty for criticizing the Prophet and the Qur’an.

In fact, the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami in 1993 had proposed in the parliament a draft blasphemy law, which was strikingly very similar to what Pakistan enacted in 1986. The draft was shredded by both the ruling and opposition lawmakers of that time.

Islamic scholars passionately debate that the Holy Qur’an has not sanctioned blasphemy. Nor is there any mentionable edict in the Hadith to punish a blasphemer in this living world.

The non-believers and blasphemers will be condemned to hell on the Day of Judgment.

They also do not hesitate to demand that the Qur’an and Sunnah replace the state constitution, which was earned from the Liberation War by millions of martyrs.

Unfortunately, the zealots were never accused of sedition or provoking a law and order situation.

Their interpretation of Wahhabi Islam has gradually penetrated into the minds of majoritarian Muslims in the country. The Wahhabi doctrine advocates strict Sharia laws that have been implemented in many conservative Muslim countries.

The bigots also harbor inner contradictions regarding the war crimes trial. The Islamists tacitly agree that henchmen of the marauding Pakistan army were responsible for crimes against humanity and should be brought to justice. Equally, they hate to see Islamists being punished for crimes perpetrated in 1971.

In a naive statement, the mullahs believe that the International Crimes Tribunal deliberately targeted Islamists because of pro-India secularists, the country which has immensely contributed to the birth of Bangladesh.

Intimidation by the Islamists is pushing a pluralistic society into a tight corner. Understanding that the state religion Islam will never be deleted from the constitution, their hate speech has multiplied.

The Islamists have dared to destabilize a secular fabric of the society and challenge the spirit of the Liberation War.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune newspaper on 26 November 2019
Saleem Samad, is an independent journalist, media rights defender, also recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad; He can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Islamist threat challenges LGBT, Gay and Lesbian in Bangladesh

Saleem Samad

Tourist’s most popular guidebook Lonely Planet, advises gay travellers to be discreet in Bangladesh, and warns that homosexuality is illegal in Bangladesh, and homosexual acts are punishable under Bangladesh law with deportation, fines and/or prison.

In December 2008, Bangladesh was one of 59 countries that signed a statement opposing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights at the United Nations General Assembly.

Unfortunately, Bangladesh is one of 75 countries that currently have laws criminalizing homosexuality and the highest punishment for “unnatural intercourses” is life imprisonment, but lesser jail terms of up to 10 years in prison and fines might also be handed out under the existing law, writes Dhaka Tribune.

Primarily the country is a Sunni Muslim majoritarian nation, a major challenge for the LGBT, gay and lesbian communities facing in Bangladesh.

Despite Bangladesh being a conservative country, the government in July 2016 has recognized the ‘trans-gender’ community as ‘third gender’ with a single-sentence: “The Government of Bangladesh has recognized the Hijra community of Bangladesh as a Hijra sex.”

This circular represented a significant step toward securing a range of rights for Bangladesh’s ‘hijras’ — people who, assigned “male” at birth, identify as feminine later in life and prefer to be recognized as ‘hijra’ or a third gender.

According to Section 377, the country’s British colonial-era penal code, voluntary carnal intercourse against “the order of nature with any man, woman or animal” is punishable with imprisonment for life or with imprisonment which may extend to ten years and fines.

The Dhaka Tribune in an editorial writes against section 377 of the criminal code stating their belief that while most people in Bangladesh were against homosexuality, they did not want to see people put in jail for it or for the government to waste resources treating it as a crime.

Same-sex romantics or sexual activities are not accepted in society, with LGBT people facing discrimination, verbal and physical abuse, and unique legal and social challenges. Same-sex sexual activity, whether in public or private, is illegal and punishable with fines and up to life imprisonment, though this law is rarely enforced. However Bangladeshi societies view it as a negative activity. Consequently, Bangladesh does not recognise the relationship between same gender.

The New York based rights defender, Human Rights Watch (HRW) states that “Discrimination against LGBT people is pervasive in Bangladesh”.

Homosexual relations are criminalized in Bangladesh and many LGBT activists have been forced into exile.

According to NBC, those who have fled the country are slowly reconnecting and trying to organize a meeting to assess the situation. The attacks have driven local LGBT activists underground, French news agency AFP reported.

On March 30, Labannya Hijra, a third gender activist became a Bangladeshi hero. Witnessing the murder by Islamist militants of the secular blogger Washiqur Rahman Babuon a street in capital Dhaka, she grabbed the fleeing assailants. Her courageous intervention led to the arrest of two men, who later confessed to the killing.

Days after Xulhaz Mannan and Tonoy Mahbub hacked to death in a Dhaka apartment on the evening of April 25, 2016, HRW urged the Bangladesh authority to immediately probe the killings of two LGBT human rights activists.

Ansar-al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of dreaded Al Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The groups said “the two were killed because they were ‘pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh’ and were ‘working day and night to promote homosexuality … with the help of their masters, the U.S. crusaders and its Indian allies,’” CTV reported.

Mannan was an editor of Roopban, Bangladesh’s first LGBT specialised magazine, which began publishing in 2014. He was a visible and openly gay human rights activist who supported and protected LGBT people even in the face of threats against the community.

The assassination of two LGBT rights activists follow a spate of 30 killings since early 2015, targeted attacks on writers, educators, bloggers, and editors who advocated liberal and secular democracy, that radical groups believe are against Islamic ideology.

In the face of police and civil authorities’ reluctance to provide security to those who sought help in the wake of death threats by the Muslim bigots has caused shiver and fear among them.

“This one incident broke the sense of security. More than 15 people left the country. More than 10 want to leave. People in Bangladesh don’t want to talk to us. The whole community is so scattered and scared,” an activist told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of an international LGBT conference in Bangkok, Thailand in end of 2016.

In 2013, the country’s National Human Rights Commission called on the government to protect sexual and gender minorities from discrimination.

To add fuel into fire, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina advised bloggers and social media activists to use restraint in their exercise of free speech or leave the country for their safety.

In recent years, LGBT people in Bangladesh have also been targeted with extremist rhetoric. For example, in November 2015, when activists began publishing a cartoon series featuring a lesbian character, religious groups issued hateful anti-LGBT statements, calling on the government to prosecute LGBT people under section 377 and Sharia (Islamic Law).

Even though a small number of gay rights organisations and activists in Bangladesh were raising their voice to establish rights for the LGBT community, none of them has so far engaged in a legal fight to recognise the status of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the country, said Supreme Court lawyer Jyotirmoy Barua.

First published in Shuddhashar online magazine, October 2019

Saleem Samad, is an Ashoka Fellow (USA), recipient of Hellman-Hammett Award and also Bangladesh correspondent of Paris based international media rights organization, Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter @saleemsamad

Where have the Hindus population gone?

A Hindu woman show an item from her family temple was damaged by militant Muslims - Photo:  Mahmud Hossain Opu

SALEEM SAMAD

Secularist Shahriar Kabir, Muntassir Mamoon, Prof Syed Anwar Hossain, Prof Imtiaz Ahmed, Prof Ameena Mohsin, Prof CR Abrar, Robaet Ferdous, and many others often contest the concept of “minority” as used by politicians, law-makers, bureaucrats, and policymakers.

They ask -- who is a “minority” in Bangladesh?

Imtiaz Ahmed and Amena Mohsin argued that the rule of “majoritarian” is in three segments. First, Bangalis are the majority in Bangladesh; second, they are Muslim in the majority, and third, they are by default bonded with Bangali nationalism.

The triple majority gives them a culturally homogenous population.

In this formulation, the political elites chose the dominant/majority community as a model of the nation, while the minority/weaker communities were expected to assimilate themselves with the “mainstream,” ie the dominant majority community, writes Prof Amena Mohsin.

Apparently, Bengal spearheaded racial politics, which ultimately led to the birth of Pakistan. All-India Muslim League was born in 1906 in Dhaka, and leaders from Bengal proposed the controversial two-nations theory, separate homeland for Indian Muslims.

The two-nation theory of Muhammad Ali Jinnah tore the Bangali community apart amongst Hindu and Muslim in 1947. The rest is history.

In the year 1946, 1947, 1992, and 2001, there was widespread racial violence which resulted in countless deaths and also triggered forced migration from both India and then East Pakistan.

Days after Khaleda Zia’s dramatic return to power after the general elections on October 1, the untold persecution of Hindu voters, as well as armed attacks on Awami League voters, raged throughout the country.

Filmmaker and journalist Shahriar Kabir had documented the persecution in several volumes and produced documentary films on the reign of terror unleashed by Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) henchmen and its alliance of Islamist parties.

Similarly, the AL government after a judicial inquiry into the violence during post-October 1 elections also published volumes of narratives of persecution -- mostly Hindus and AL’s local leaders and voters.

Abul Barakat, a renowned economist and professor of Dhaka University, predicts that in the next 30 years, there will be no Hindus living in this country. 

To establish his research, he claims that an average of 632 Hindus left the country each day and 230,612 annually.

Afsan Chowdhury, a liberation war historian and an academic explains “low-intensity violence” against religious and ethnic minorities caused forced migration.

In an article, “Disasters: Issues and Responses, in Philip Gain (ed) Bangladesh Environment: Facing the 21st Century,” published in 1988 by Society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD), that the independence of Bangladesh has not brought much peace for Hindus who numbered about 10 million in Bangladesh.

Lack of socio-economic opportunities, low-intensity hostility at all socio-economic levels including the state, and greater opportunities across the border are the push-pull factors which have led to Hindus crossing through the porous border every day, writes Afsan Chowdhury.

The researcher further states that the Hindus are passing through a disaster situation as their life, property, and peace have all been made to feel insecure by the lack of security, and existing state policies and public action, which are forcing them to escape to another land, another society.

The declaration of Islam as the state religion may not have many institutional or formal ramifications, but it has made the minorities in Bangladesh distant from the core of the state. 

This illustrates how low-intensity violence against minorities can push millions into a state of silent disaster.

Mohiuddin Ahmad, a writer, and researcher in an article in Weekly Holiday published on January 7, 1994, writes that the first census (1974) of independent Bangladesh registered the population of Hindus to be 13.5% of the total population. 

This proportion dropped down to 12.1% in 1981 and 10.5% in 1991, while the proportion of Buddhists and Christians remained stable. The Muslim population, however, increased from 85.4% in 1974 to 88.3% in 1991.

He argues that the Hindu population cannot wither away. In demographic terms, the situation has to be addressed using relevant parameters of fertility, morality, growth rate, and migration.

Nearly 78 years ago in 1941, 28.3% of the total population was comprised of minorities.

The population of Hindus was 11.88 million. Despite the population growth, the present Hindu population stands at around 12 million.

If the normal increase rate prevailed, the number of the Hindu community in this country would have been 32.5 million, but the Hindu population in Bangladesh stood at 12.5 million in the 1991 census. Therefore, the missing population is 20 million or more by now.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 28 July 2019

Saleem Samad is an Ashoka Fellow, recipient of Hellman-Hammett Award, a freelance journalist, and media rights defender.

In Bangladesh, climate worsens for journalists

SUMIT GALHOTRA

This past weekend, hundreds of thousands of Islamists took to the streets in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, demanding death for bloggers whose work they see as blasphemous. The demonstrations highlight the deteriorating climate for journalists, both those whose work is the target of the protests and those who have tried to cover the events. Several journalists were assaulted while covering the day-long demonstrations, including reporter Nadia Sharmin of the private broadcaster Ekushey Television. She was assaulted by a group of 50 to 60 Islamists who threw her to the ground, beat her, and told her that reporting was an unfit profession for a woman, news reports said.

These most recent demonstrations led by the Islamist political party, Hefajat-e-Islam, are in response to online writers and activists who have been instrumental in amplifying support for the Shahbagh movement, which arose in early February when a senior Islamist was sentenced to life imprisonment by a war crimes tribunal in connection with mass killings dating back to the 1971 war for independence from Pakistan. Many Bangladeshis saw the sentence as problematic given that criminals in the country--consistently rated one of the most corrupt nations in the world --are often set free for political gain when a new party comes to power. The Shahbagh movement calls for the death penalty against all those standing trial for war crimes. The movement also became a rallying call against growing Islamic fundamentalism in a country that is 90 percent Muslim.

Threats to online journalists who have written about growing fundamentalism surfaced in January when the popular blogger Asif Mohiuddin, who describes himself as an atheist, was stabbed by religious extremists. Events took a deadly turn on February 15 when Ahmed Rajib Haider, another well-known blogger, was hacked to death outside his home by assailants wielding machetes, a case that CPJ is still investigating.

Islamists also took to the streets in response to the Shahbagh movement, leading to violent flare-ups across the country. Several journalists were injured while covering protests. A well-known journalist couple--Nayeemul Islam Khan and Nasima Khan Monti--had a series of bombs hurled at their car while driving home from a social event last month. Khan has been a frequent commentator on television talk shows, and his opinions might have offended one of the contending parties, news reports said. The day after the attack on the journalists' car, unidentified assailants threw three homemade explosives at the Chittagong Press Club, where local journalists had gathered to be briefed on a planned rally by members of the Shahbagh movement.

In a disturbing development, four bloggers were arrested last week on charges of insulting Islam through their Internet writings. The bloggers, who have written about Islamist fundamentalism in a critical way, face up to 10 years in jail under existing cyber laws. The arrests come amid a wider crackdown on the Internet in which the government has blocked about a dozen websites and blogs since last week. Authorities have also set up a panel, which included intelligence chiefs, to investigate material posted on social media sites that is perceived to be blasphemous. Last week, the country's telecommunications regulator ordered two sites to remove hundreds of posts by seven bloggers whose writings it said offended Muslims, reports said.

Many bloggers have stopped writing, and some have gone into hiding fearing for their life, according to a Dhaka-based blogger who did not want his name publicized due to security concerns. At least eight sites announced a blackout on the blogosphere in protest of the recent arrests and wider crackdown. One such site posted a notice that read: "Bangla Blogosphere begins blackout in protest against harassing and cracking down on bloggers."

With violence continuing and the government saying that more arrests are to come, the situation is bleak for Bangladeshi bloggers.

First published in CPJ Blog, Press Freedom News and Views, April 8, 2013

Sumit Galhotra is CPJ’s first Steiger Fellow. He has worked for CNN International, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch, and has reported from London, India, and Israel and the Occupied Territories. He specializes in human rights and South Asia