Tag Archives: ICT

Bangladesh’s government shares blame for spate of blogger murders

Dhaka-based LGBT activist Xulhaz Mannan and the former US ambassador to Bangladesh, Dan Mozena, in 2014. (Facebook)
Dhaka-based LGBT activist Xulhaz Mannan and the former US ambassador to Bangladesh, Dan Mozena, in 2014. (Facebook)

No one in Bangladesh’s government wielded the machetes that hacked to death Xulhaz Mannan, a prominent LGBT activist and local USAID officer, at his home on Monday in Dhaka.bangladesh flag icon

Just like no one in the Bangladeshi government actually perpetrated the murders of so many active bloggers before him in the last two years. Asif Mohiuddin or Ahmed Rajib Haider in 2013.

Or Shafiul Islam in 2014.

Or Avijit Roy or Washiqur Rahman or Ananta Bijoy Das or Niloy Neel or Faisal Arefin Dipan in 2015.

None of these names are necessarily household names in the United States or even in Bangladesh. In aggregate, however, they represent an audacious attempt by ultraconservative Islamists to silence the secular voices in the world’s eighth-most populous country.

And, with Mannan’s gruesome death, it may be working.

In 2013, hardline Islamists published a ‘hit list’ of at least 84 prominent online writers in Bangladesh, many of whom are secularists, like Mannan, a 35-year-old who published Rupban, a Bangladesh-based magazine for LGBT people in his country. Roy, perhaps the most high-profile victim, was a Bangladeshi-American activist who hosted a website that brought together many brands of secular humanist thought in Bangladesh.

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RELATED: Two years later, Bangladesh needs a real opposition

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With a discrete list of bloggers publicly identified for reprisal by jihadists and radical Islamists who have pledged loyalty, in some cases, to the Islamic State group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq, it should not be difficult for a functional government to protect seven dozen individuals in a country of 169 million people.

Quite to the contrary, government officials have done little to apprehend the perpetrators of crimes that have chilled freedom of speech and expression in Bangladesh, often suggesting that murdered writers may have crossed an invisible line by criticizing Islam too harshly in a country where religion and politics have been dangerously intertwined since its bloody war for independence from Pakistan in 1971:

Rather than condemn the killers, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan scolded the victims, telling CNN: “The bloggers, they should control their writing. Our country is a secular state. … I want to say that people should be careful not to hurt anyone by writing anything — hurt any religion, any people’s beliefs, any religious leaders.”

Continue reading Bangladesh’s government shares blame for spate of blogger murders

Two years later, Bangladesh needs a real opposition

Bangladesh's prime minister Sheikh Hasina won an election boycotted by the opposition two years ago today.
Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina won an election boycotted by the opposition two years ago today.

On this week in 2014, Bangladesh’s prime minister Shiekh Hasina was enjoying a hollow reelection, with a supermajority in the Jatiyo Sangsad (জাতীয় সংসদ), Bangladesh’s unicameral parliament. Hasina had pushed forward with elections, despite breaching political trading by refusing to appoint a caretaker government and despite the opposition’s determination to boycott the vote as flawed.bangladesh flag icon

Nearly two decades prior, when Hasina and her Bangladesh Awami League (বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগ) were in the opposition and boycotted the 1996 elections, the two major parties worked out a compromise for a new vote four months later — a vote that the Awami League went on to win.

After her uncontested victory in January 2014, however, Hasina used the opportunity not to enter into negotiations with her rival,  Khaleda Zia, and other leaders of the more Islamist and more conservative Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP, বাংলাদেশ জাতীয়তাবাদী দল). Instead, Hasina has spent the past two years working to undermine not only the BNP, but the entire framework of Bangladeshi democracy, however fragile it had been since independence in 1971.

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RELATED: Zia indictment won’t help
solve Bangladesh’s political standoff

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Today, Hasina’s government has so marginalized the BNP that the seesaw of power between the two parties is far more lopsided than at any time in the past 30 years. Zia has been detained and placed under house arrest for much of the past two years, other top BNP leaders were imprisoned or exiled, the BNP’s hardline Islamist allies Jamaat-e-Islami (বাংলাদেশ জামায়াতে ইসলামী) have been virtually criminalized and some of its leaders, on trial for war crimes from the 1971 war for independence, executed. 

Fresh elections are due only in 2018, three years from now, by which time there might not be a robust opposition to wage much of a challenge at all. Continue reading Two years later, Bangladesh needs a real opposition

14 in 2014: Bangladesh parliamentary elections

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1. Bangladesh parliamentary elections, January 5 (and perhaps again, later in 2014).bangladesh flag icon

Bangladesh is home to 155 million people, making it the eighth-most populous country in the world.  When voters go to the polls just after the New Year, however, it’s certain that the governing Bangladesh Awami League (বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগ) and prime minister Sheikh Hasina (pictured above) will win reelection.  That’s because the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP, বাংলাদেশ জাতীয়তাবাদী দল) is boycotting the vote, largely over Hasina’s refusal to appoint a caretaker government to oversee the election’s administration.

The most relevant precedent is 1996, when the BNP’s leader, Khaleda Zia, was prime minister and Hasina and the Awami League were in the opposition.  The Awami League boycotted the February 1996 elections and the BNP won all 300 seats in the Bangladeshi parliament, but the parties eventually came to a deal on fresh elections, and both parties participated in the subsequent June 1996 elections.

Though the players are chiefly the same — the Zia/Hasina rivalry has influenced the country’s politics since the 1980s — the stakes have grown much higher.  Hasina established the International Crimes Tribunal in 2009 to prosecute the war crimes related to the brutal 1971 war for Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan.  When the ICT sentenced Islamist leader Abdul Quader Mollah to life imprisonment, protesters came out in droves to Shabagh Square in Dhaka in early 2013 to contest the sentence as too lenient.  The government relented, executed Quader Mollah in December and banned the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (বাংলাদেশ জামায়াতে ইসলামী), even though it’s never galvanized widespread support in Bangladesh.  That, too, caused protests and Quader Mollah’s execution brought international condemnation on Hasina’s government.  The protests on both sides have demonstrated that the wounds of 1971 are far from healed.  The opposition has conducted a general strike that’s threatening the economy, and Hasina has found herself increasingly isolated.

Photo credit to The Hindu.

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