Time and again the Government of the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh has limited the freedom of expression or the freedom of the press by laws, and has at times tried to limit it by unlawful harassments of journalists and/or newspapers. Every year many journalists are unlawfully tortured, many face trials, and many are imprisoned. In 2013 the government passed a new law, the Information & Communication Technology (Amendment) Act, which has a very controversial section. In section 57 of the ICT (Amendment) Act-2013 it states: “If any person deliberately publishes or transmits or causes to be published or transmitted in the website or in any other electronic form any material which is false and obscene and if anyone sees, hears, or reads it having regard to all relevant circumstances, it’s effect is such as to influence the reader to become dishonest or corrupt, or causes to deteriorate or creates the possibility to deteriorate law and order, prejudice the image of the state or person or causes to hurt or may hurt religious belief or instigate against any person or organization, then this activity will be regarded as an offence.” For this offence one cannot get out on bail and it is punishable with a minimum of seven years to a maximum of fourteen years imprisonment or with a fine up to ten million BDT (USD 130,000). Since the enforcement of the law, it has been severely used against the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, particularly for those who express their thoughts in social media such as blogs and on Facebook. Many bloggers and facebookers have been arrested and sent to prison with the charges of hurting religious sentiments, particularly Islam. Few have been arrested for criticizing the ruling party’s activities.
The worst part of the law is that the majority of
Muslims are deliberately using this law to harass others, particularly
people of other religions and atheists. In September 2015, an NGO
director named Mohon Kumar Mondol was arrested on the charge of hurting
religious sentiments in a Facebook update. He had just criticized the
Saudi Government for the accident during the hajj pilgrimage. It is
surprising that he was arrested less than an hour after the status was
given. Similar arrests are very common in Bangladesh. A journalist named
Manash Mukherjee was arrested for his writing on Facebook and for
criticizing in a newspaper a minister’s activities to wipe out a
renowned Hindu family in Faridpur, Bangladesh. But, after huge criticism
on the social media such as Facebook and various blogs, he has been
released on bail. Although he has been charged with an ICT
offence (usually not bailable), he has been allowed to get out on bail.
This indicates that the judiciary system is totally controlled by the
Government. Similar kinds of arrests for exercising the freedom of
speech are very common in Bangladesh.
The examples above show the general restrictions
enforced by the authorities that the people of Bangladesh are facing
concerning the freedom of speech. However, the most fearsome
restrictions are those that bloggers and writers are facing in
Bangladesh. In 2015 a total of five persons have been hacked to death by
the Islamic terrorist organizations—among them four writers/bloggers
and one publisher. Another two writers and a publisher have been
attacked but they have survived. All these writers/bloggers and the
publisher were murdered on the grounds that the Islamic terrorists
deemed their writings to have hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims.
In fact, as atheists the writers/bloggers favored secularism, human
rights, women’s empowerment, and they sometimes criticized Islam,
particularly Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic terrorism, and the
filthiness of the Sharia law; they wrote scientific essays of which some
contradicted Islamic teachings, and the publishers published books by
atheists for business purposes even though they are not
atheists themselves.
On the 26th of February 2015, Avijit Roy (42), a Bangladeshi-American writer and founder of the first Bengali secular blog site Mukto-Mona
(free thinker), was hacked to death at Dhaka University Campus. He is
the author of nine books—a few of them unique in Bengali literature. He
came to Bangladesh to attend a month-long book fair on the occasion of
publishing two new titles. His wife Bonya Ahmed was also nearly killed
at the same time. She survived but lost her left thumb. Avijit Roy was
one of the most prominent scientific writers in the Bengali language and
he was a great international voice practicing the freedom of expression
in Bangladesh. In 2013, when four bloggers had been arrested and sent
to prison by the police, he stood up against it and built international
support for their release. His death is a great loss to the freedom of
speech and the freedom of expression for the Bangladeshi people.
Another writer, Washiqur Rahman Babu (27), was
murdered on the street of Dhaka city on March 30 on his way to his
office very close to his house. He was a secular blogger and a satirist
of social injustice and religious bigotry. Rahman was not even on the
list of the 84 atheist bloggers published by the fundamentalists of
Bangladesh in 2013. Although he wrote in his own name, most of his
fellow bloggers did not know his identity nor had they ever seen his
photo. But the terrorists identified him anyhow and killed him. Two
murderers were captured with machetes by a passer-by when they were
fleeing after the murder. Both of them are madrasah students, who told
the police that they feel proud to have killed Rahman; they do not know
what he wrote or where he wrote but they had simply been ordered to
carry out the murder by their superiors, which they did.
Also, a blogger and writer named Ananta Bijoy Das (32) was murdered in Sylhet on the 12th of May in 2015. He was likewise killed on the street close to his house on the way to his office. He was a moderator of the Mukto-Mona
blog along with Avijit Roy and the author of three scientific books.
Most of his blog entries are about evolutionary theory. After the death
of Avijit Roy, Bijoy Das understood that he would also be killed by the
Islamic terrorists so he tried to leave the country but failed.
The latest secular blogger to be murdered in
Bangladesh is Niladri Chatterjee (27) who is also known as Niloy Nil. He
was killed at his rented house on the 7th of August. On the 15th
of May he posted on Facebook that he had noticed that some persons were
following him, and that he had gone to the police for a general update
but the police refused to listen. He also wrote that the police refused
on the grounds that they would not be able to ensure his security.
Instead they had advised him either to stop writing or to leave
Bangladesh. Most of the Bangladeshi bloggers are not willing to go to
the police because they fear harassment by them. Niladri Chatterjee was
an active voice against the oppression by the Islamic fundamentalists of
Hindu and other minorities. He was also active in participating
physically in all kinds of demonstrations, for example, with the human
rights movement and the women’s rights movement.
After the death of Niladri Chatterjee the police
have been severely criticized in media at home and abroad and now they
are granting some kind of security to those who apply for it. But
bloggers can depend little on the police since, two days after the
murder of Niladri Chaterjee, the Inspector General of the Police (IGP)
of Bangladesh advised the bloggers not to cross the limit. Though he
criticized the killing his speech almost legitimized the murders.
Besides, it seems that the Government of Bangladesh has little concern
over the killings of the secular bloggers. There are so many murders but
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is yet to say anything about them to media
or elsewhere. Sajeeb Ahmed Wajed Joy, son of the Prime Minister, told
Reuters that the killing of the bloggers is too sensitive an issue for
his mother to speak about in public. Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, a popular
writer and former professor of the Shahjalal Science and Technological
University in Bangladesh, told media that Joy's statement seemed to give
the impression that the murders would continue and that the Government
would do nothing—say nothing. After this speech Mr. Iqbal was severely
criticized by some members of the student’s wing of the ruling party,
and radical Muslims sent letters to him to warn him to prepare himself
for death. Now he has been assigned bodyguards for his safety. Moreover,
most of the mainstream writers, fearing for their own lives, are
reluctant to speak against the murders. Instead, like the IGP,
some of them are criticizing bloggers for the content of their
writings. Very few writers have participated in the movements demanding
the arrest and trial of the murderers.
So, at this point almost all the bloggers fear to
live in their own country. Most of the prominent bloggers have left
Bangladesh with the help of various humanitarian organizations—few have
left by their own capacity but there are still many left in the country.
They are living in the utmost fear of being killed anytime and
anywhere. Many have stopped writing altogether; many have deleted their
posts, or blogs, or deactivated their Facebook IDs.
And on October 31 Faisal Arefin Deepan, the owner
of a publishing house named ‘Jagriti Prokashoni,’ was murdered in his
office. He had published two books by Avijit Roy, who was murdered in
February. Another publisher of Avijit Roy’s book was also attacked on
the same day along with two writers/bloggers but they survived, having
procured huge injuries. The attacks on these publishers have of course
changed the total scenario of the freedom of speech in Bangladesh.
Earlier on, only secular writers/bloggers feared to be killed by the
Islamic extremists, but now publishers are also fearing attack. So, most
of the publishers are scared to publish books by secular writers. In
February 2015, the office of a publishing house called ‘Rodela
Prokashoni’ was also attacked by the extremists for publishing a
translated book named 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Muhammad
originally written by Ali Dashti. The office of the publishing house
had been closed and for two years it was banned from participating in
the ‘Ekushey Book Fair.’ So, the future of the freedom of speech in
Bangladesh remains dark. All the murders and attacks on the
writers/bloggers and publishers have been acknowledged by the
‘Ansarullah Bangla Team,’ a banned terrorist organization of Islamic
radicals, or by ‘Ansar Al Islam,’ the Indian Sub-Continent wing
of Al-Qaeda.
The persecution of writers is not a new
phenomenon in Bangladesh. Since Independence Bangladesh has been
suffering from a lack of freedom of speech and writers have been
persecuted for exercising this freedom. The first case in this regard
was in 1974 when a poet named Daud Haider was exiled for writing a poem.
Now he is living in Germany. Several times he tried to return to
Bangladesh but could not. Taslima Nasreen, a famous writer and a
feminist, needed to flee from the country in 1994 for her book Lajja,
a book about the problems facing Hindu families living amongst radical
Muslims. The book is banned in Bangladesh along with three other books
published later in Kolkata, India. Ms. Nasreen is also currently living
abroad and she has never been allowed to return to Bangladesh. Islamic
extremists have demanded a death penalty for the writer and intellectual
the late Professor Ahmad Sarif; they have attacked the house of the
renowned poet late Shamsur Rahman in 1999; they have tried to
assassinate the renowned writer late Humayun Azad on Dhaka University
campus in 2003; they have in 2007 demanded a death penalty for Arifur
Rahman, a cartoonist of a news magazine who faced trial and relocated to
Norway afterwards with the help of ICORN;
they have attacked Asif Mohiuddin, a secular blogger, in front of his
office in Dhaka on January 15, 2013 (he later left Bangladesh and is now
living in Germany); and they have killed Ahmed Rajib Haider, a secular
blogger from Dhaka, on the 15th of February in 2013.
In 2013, immediately after the murder of the
blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider by the Ansarullah Bangla Team, a few
newspapers owned by radical Muslims deliberately and unethically
published blog writings that contained a critique of some Quranic verses
promoting violence. As Haider was a supporter of the ‘Shahbagh
Movement’ (a spontaneous movement initiated by some bloggers to demand
capital punishment for the war crimes in 1971), and as most of the
convicted persons involved in war crime belong to a radical Islamic
political party, there was a huge uprising of the radical Muslims
against the ‘Shahbagh Movement’ as well as against the bloggers. An
Islamic organization of madrasah teachers and students named
Hefazot-e-Islam demanded a death penalty for all the secular bloggers
(they used the term ‘atheist bloggers’). Attending an Islamic gathering,
Allama Shah Ahmad Shafi, chief of the organization, provoked the
Islamic radicals by saying that the killing of the atheist bloggers is
the solemn duty of every Muslim. But he was neither arrested nor did he
face any kind of trial for this type of provocative speech, instead the
Government donated some valuable land to the madrasah he governed. In
fact, the Government of Bangladesh tried to pacify him with some reward
so that he and his organization would keep calm. This Islamic
organization has thirteen demands on their list and almost all of them
are primitive in nature.
During the uprising this Islamic organization
handed over a list of eighty-four atheist bloggers to the Government and
demanded a death penalty for all of them. In response the Government
arrested four bloggers. They were sent to prison and a trial ensued.
Three of them have left the country free on bail. The ICT
(Amendment) Act-2013 is also a response from the Government to the
demands of Hefazot-e-Islam. Now all the secular bloggers fear being
killed by the radicals or being arrested on the grounds of violation of
the ICT (Amendment) Act.
In Bangladesh there are some other facts that
have made the secular bloggers vulnerable to persecution by the Islamic
extremists. There are more than 50,000 madrasahs in Bangladesh over
which the Government has no control at all. These madrasahs are called
‘Qawmi’ madrasahs and they follow their own syllabus, which includes
only Islamic education and jihadism. Every year thousands of children
are getting this education and mentally they are becoming jihadists. The
Government has several times tried to take control over this kind of
education but has failed. Moreover, due to protests organized by the
Islamic extremists the Government of Bangladesh was bound to cancel the
drafted women’s development policy that entailed equal rights to
property. They also demand the cancellation of the present education
policy although the policy does not cover the ‘Qawmi’ madrasahs and
there is already religious education in the policy.
During its emergence as an independent country
Bangladesh was a secular country because the liberation movement was
secular in nature and at the root of the movement was the Bengali
Language Movement of 1948 and 1952, which also was secular in nature.
But, immediately after Independence the country has gradually moved
backwards and now there is very little scope to exercise the freedom of
speech. It is now quite normal for most of the countries to have some
religious and/or ethnic radical/extremist organizations and it is also
normal that these try to stop people from exercising their freedom of
speech/expression. These organizations must be successfully curtailed by
the Government, but sadly, Bangladesh has failed to tackle them and
there is little hope that they will do so in the near future.
Another list here.
Blogging is generally a benign, silly, typo-ridden, fact-challenged, and
entirely inconsequential pastime—but not always, as many of the
following real-life stories gruesomely illustrate. In some instances,
these victims lost their lives as a direct result of their blogging; in
others it was merely incidental. But every case was fatal.
1. Jessica Ghawi (USA)
A young sports blogger, Ms. Ghawi was shot down during the infamous Dark Knight Rises massacre
at a Colorado movie theater in July 2012. A month earlier, she’d
narrowly escaped death during a shooting spree at a Toronto food court.
After that incident she’d blogged:
I can’t get this odd feeling out of my
chest. This empty, almost sickening feeling won’t go away….I was
reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end.
When or where we will breathe our last breath. For one man, it was in
the middle of a busy food court on a Saturday evening.
Her last online post was a Tweet directed to a hockey writer for Sporting News: “MOVIE DOESN’T START FOR 20 MINUTES.” Soon afterward, she was one of 12 dead victims.
2. Christine Keith (USA)
Beloved as the woman behind the “Adventures of a Thrifty Mama”
blog, this Michigan Zumba instructor and mother of four had separated
from her unemployed husband and filed court papers alleging that he’d
repeatedly threatened to kill her with his hunting rifle. One night in
the summer of 2013, her estranged husband showed up with a rifle and murdered both her and one of her sons before killing himself.
3. Ahmed Rajib Haider (Bangladesh)
An architect and anti-Islamist blogger who
joined mass protests against fundamentalist authorities, Haider was
attacked by two masked men outside his home and chopped to death one night in February 2013. A bloody machete was found next to his laptop.
4, 5, 6, 7. Mexican Cartel Victims, Autumn 2011
Next to Iraq, Mexico is purportedly the most dangerous place on Earth for journalists, with an estimated 58 reporters, editors, and photographers
having been slaughtered by drug gangs since 2000. In September of 2011,
a pair of unnamed “narco-bloggers” were found hanging from a pedestrian
overpass in Nuevo Laredo with a sign allegedly identifying them as
“Internet Snitches.” Later in September, 39-year-old Elizabeth Macias,
who blogged under the pseudonym “Laredo Girl,” was found beheaded with a
sign that allegedly said:
Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social
networking sites, I’m The Laredo Girl, and I’m here because of my
reports, and yours. For those who don’t want to believe, this happened
to me because of my actions, for believing in the army and the navy.
Thank you for your attention, respectfully, Laredo Girl…ZZZZ.
In November of that year, an anti-cartel blogger who wrote under the pseudonym Rascatripas (“Belly Scratcher”) was found beheaded with this note near his carcass: This happened to me for not understanding that I shouldn’t report on the social networks.
8. Edinaldo Filgueira (Brazil)
A pro-worker political party leader and newspaper owner, Filgueira
was thought to have been shot to death in June of 2011 as the result of
a blog entry that criticized local government officials. He had
received death threats subsequent to his fatal post and was gunned down
by three men on motorcycles while leaving his newspaper office.
9. Robert Chasowa (Malawi)
A 25-year-old student at a Polytechnic
School in this tiny eastern African country, Chasowa reportedly received
threats after criticizing the regime of President Bingu wa
Mutharika. He was eventually murdered on campus in September 2011.
Police originally ruled the death a suicide, although a special commission concluded that he had been murdered.
10. Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri (Bahrain)
In April 2011, this Bahraini blogger was arrested
and charged with spreading false information and inciting hatred
against the government. He was found dead while still in custody.
Although officials said he had died from sickle cell anemia, photos of
his slashed corpse emerged and led to an investigation which concluded
he had been beaten by authorities. They eventually filed his case under
“Deaths Caused by Torture.”
11. Socratis Giolas (Greece)
An investigative journalist and blogger who allegedly wrote about Greece’s “seamier underside,”
Giolas was allegedly shot sixteen times on the doorstep of his Athens
home in front of his pregnant wife by a radical Marxist group known as
the Sect of Revolutionaries. The 2010 slaying was timed mere days before
he was scheduled to publish “an investigative series on corruption.”
12. Magomed Yevloyev (Russia)
The owner of a news website in the Russian Republic of Ingushetia that was known for its oppositional stance toward the republic’s president, Yevloyev
was taken into police custody in August 2008, whereupon he was fatally
shot in the temple. Police claimed he’d tried to grab one of their
rifles, an explanation that has not been accepted by global human-rights
organizations or the US government.
13. Sattar Beheshti (Iran)
An Iranian blogger who’d repeatedly criticized the Islamic Republic’s government on Facebook, Beheshti
was detained by the Iranian Cyber Police in late October 2012. The day
prior to his arrest, he allegedly posted the following on his blog:
They threatened me yesterday and said, ‘Your mother will soon wear black because you don’t shut your big mouth.’
After his arrest, he filed a signed complaint to his prison warden stating the following:
I,
Sattar Beheshti, was arrested by FATA and beaten and tortured with
multiple blows to my head and body….I want to write that if anything
happens to me, the police are responsible.
On November 6, his family was notified to
come and “collect his body.” A member of the Iranian Parliament denied
that he had been murdered while in custody but instead had died of
“shock and fear” despite the fact that 41 Iranian prisoners signed a
letter that said “signs of torture were visible on the blogger’s body.”
14. Mohammed Nabbous (Libya)
A renowned Libyan blogger and “civilian journalist”
who founded an independent TV channel, Nabbous was shot dead in March
2011 by a loyalist sniper in Benghazi while filming a broadcast about
clashes between government forces and revolutionaries.
15. Simon Ng (USA)
A teenage Chinese immigrant to the US, Ng and his sister were stabbed to death
in Queens, NY in 2005 by his sister’s ex-boyfriend, who allegedly was
trying to rob them of money for a return trip to Hong Kong. Police
located the perpetrator after reading a blog entry of Ng’s posted only
moments before his murder where he stated that the ex-boyfriend was
getting agitated and that he wished he would leave.
16. Dennis Lane (USA)
Reputedly a “popular” Maryland “blogger and podcast co-host,”
Lane was allegedly stabbed to death by his 14-year-old daughter and her
19-year-old boyfriend in May 2013. Police reportedly said, “It’s our
detectives’ understanding that [Lane’s daughter and her boyfriend] have
conspired over the last two months, exchanging electronic communication
about planning to kill Mr. Lane.”
17. Diing Chan Awuol (South Sudan)
Blogging and writing professional news
stories under the pseudonym “Isaiah Abraham,” Awuol was openly critical
of his government and urged “an improvement with former enemies in Khartoum.” As a result, he had reportedly received phoned death threats saying, “either stop writing or we will get rid of you.” A week later, they got rid of him.
18. Steven Vincent (Iraq)
An author, journalist, and travel blogger
who wrote several investigative pieces about corruption among Shia
militias, Vincent and an Iraqi translator were kidnapped by men in
police uniforms in the city of Basra in 2005. He was bound, gagged,
beaten, and shot to death.
19 Andrew Olmsted (Iraq)
An Army major with his own website,
Olmsted wrote an ominously prophetic entry in July 2007 as he headed to
Iraq. He gave it to a friend and told him to publish it if he were to
be killed:
The ability to put my thoughts on
(virtual) paper and put them where people can read and respond to them
has been marvelous, even if most people who have read my writings
haven’t agreed with them.…I have my own opinions about what we should do
about Iraq, but since I’m not around to expound on them I’d prefer
others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a
position I probably didn’t support.
Olmstead also wrote that if he got killed,
he would miss “not being able to blog any longer.” He was killed in
action, and the blog post was published posthumously.
20. Renée Wathelet (Mexico)
A 60-year-old Canadian expatriate living in Mexico and blogging in French, Wathelet posted the following in September 2009:
I look at the sun emerging gently from
the clouds, before beginning my morning walk, from sand to the rocks,
the rocks to the sand….I try to imagine the beauty….I take the time to
take the time.
Later that day, she was stabbed to death. 
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