Abstract
Atheist bloggers in Bangladesh are fighting a battle for future freedoms, but against a harsh backdrop of attacks and legal action.
Being a blogger is dangerous these days in Bangladesh. One blogger has been murdered in the past year and four others now face trials under Bangladesh’s strict laws against spreading communal hatred. This has been a period of significant political strife in Bangladesh; opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary elections held on 5 January 2013, which saw the ruling Awami League get re-elected. They won 232 out of 300 seats in an election marred by low turnout and violence.
The four bloggers on trial – Asif Mohiuddin, Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Moshiur Rahman Biplob, and Rasel Parvez – are atheists who want to reduce the role of religion in the country’s governance. They have been charged with blasphemy – specifically disseminating “false, indecent or defamatory” information and “hurting religious sentiments” under section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act of 2006. Anyone deliberately publishing, transmitting or causing to be published on a website, anything which is “fake and obscene” or could “deprave and corrupt” people, leading to deterioration of law and order, prejudice the image of the state, or hurt religious beliefs, can be charged. Offenders face imprisonment for up to 10 years.
The background to the bloggers’ story starts in February 2012, when Abdul Quader Mullah, a leading politician of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was convicted for war crimes committed during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. He was given a life term. Popular fury erupted; people congregated at Shahbagh in the centre of Dhaka and demanded a death sentence. The government amended laws and permitted the prosecutor to appeal, seeking a death sentence. The tribunal and the appeals court obliged. On 12 December 2013, Mullah was executed.
Back in February 2012, Rajib Haidar, a 30-year-old architect who was also a blogger and wrote seeking a ban on Jamaat’s fundamentalist politics, which aims to make Bangladesh an Islamic state ruled by the shariah law, was stabbed to death. Haidar was a prominent activist in the Shahbagh movement.
The history behind this violence stretches back to Bangladesh’s bloody war of independence. From 1947 to 1971 it was part of Pakistan, but Bangladesh sought it’s freedom in 1971, which Pakistan tried to supress. As opposed to the majority of Bangladeshis, Jamaatis stood against independence. They supported the Pakistani Army, and now many of its leaders are implicated in war crimes that took place during the war of independence. It was only in 2008 that Jamaat’s opposition, the Awami League, finally returned to power with a sufficiently large majority to establish an international war crimes tribunal. The Awami League, who fought for Bangladesh’s independece during the war, had ruled briefly in independent Bangladesh’s early years, but have been out of power for much of the past 40. The war crimes tribunal indicted 11 men, the majority of them from the Jamaat, sentencing all of them to death. Mullah was executed last December, even though international human rights groups have criticised the trials consistently as flawed; critics contend that the prosecution was routinely privileged over the defence, and unreliable evidence was accepted as fact.
ABOVE: Hundreds of thousands of Islamists rallied in Dhaka after an overnight “long-march” to the Bangladeshi capital, demanding a blasphemy law and execution of “atheist bloggers” for defaming Islam
Credit: Palash Khan/Sipa USA/Rex
So it was within this context that the Shahbagh stand-off was framed: in reality it was about those who sought accountability for war crimes and those who felt the Bangladesh should move on from the divisive past - that the politically motivated trials should stop. But the Jamaat skillfully described it as a conflict between the godless atheists on one side, and the devout and pious on the other.
As pro-tribunal activists laid siege at Shahbagh, anti-tribunal activists also converged in Dhaka. Nearly 100,000 activists belonging to Hefajat-e-Islam, a madrasa-based Islamic fundamentalist organisation, a large majority of them men, marched to Dhaka from Chittagong and elsewhere, seeking the death penalty for blasphemy and strong action against “atheist bloggers” (besides the four, the Hefajat has a list of another 80 bloggers it wants prosecuted). Such was the unfolding of events after the murder of Haidar, a supporter of the tribunal. Haider had launched a campaign on his blog demanding a ban on the Jamaat and calling for a boycott of its health, banking and other services. His killers have not yet been found, although his associates insist that Jamaat was involved. Jamaat has denied any responsibility.
The four bloggers currently facing trial are among several cases being prosecuted under Bangladesh’s Information and Communication Technology Act. When they asked for the charges to be thrown out, police asserted that their “derogatory posts” (in which they opposed religion-based politics and sought a ban on the Jamaat) caused “a slide in law and order that led to anarchy.” But, with internet penetration in Bangladesh estimated at as little as 6.3 per cent of the country’s population, this accusation seems implausible.
Their trial was set for 6 November – but the prosecution did not produce any witness, and the trial was postponed to 4 March 2014. Meanwhile, the defence has filed four applications to quash the prosecutions. That case was to be heard on 8 December, but the court was unable to meet because of public unrest.
Bangladesh’s laws against causing religious offence date back to the days of the British Raj – specifically to the criminal code introduced in 1860, just after the Indian war of independence of 1857 (known in Britain as “the mutiny”). Alarmed by how disparate Indian religions and groups had united to take on the might of the East India Company, the colonial administration decided to impose rules and laws that would ensure communal harmony, which meant not only that freedom of expression was curbed, but people were empowered to complain if they felt someone was jeopardizing communal harmony.
The law in Bangladesh – similar to India’s – is that “outraging religious feelings” through “visible representation” or “attempts to insult religious beliefs” is punishable by up to two years imprisonment, with an extra year behind bars for anyone acting “with the deliberate intention of wounding the religions feelings” of another and “utters any word or makes any sound in the hearing of that person or makes any gesture in the sight of that person”.
Men marched to Dhaka, seeking the death penalty for blasphemy and strong action against “atheist bloggers”
Bangladesh does offer constitutional protection to freedom of thought, conscience and speech. But the constitution also places “reasonable” restrictions on grounds of “interests of the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence”.
Mahbubul Rahman, who teaches law at Dhaka University, believes that criminal offences under the 2006 act are very loosely defined. He says in a legal note that, by expanding the definition, state power has been expanded, inflicting “unnecessary and precarious punishment”. Rahman says that the ambiguity of the law creates “unlimited opportunity for state harassment and oppression”. Bangladesh is living through charged times. The war crimes tribunal’s verdicts have divided the population. Bangladesh’s political culture is fragile, driven by two strong personalities – Prime Minister Hasina Wajed and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia – leading rival parties, who see politics as a zero-sum game. Elections in January have not settled the issue. Once opposition parties boycotted the poll, the European Union and the United States did not send observers, and the government’s credibility and legitimacy are being questioned. As many as 153 of the 300 seats were uncontested, and even with a low turnout and the opposition’s boycott, the ruling party only won 79 of the 147 seats at play. The road ahead will be rocky.
In that volatile environment, freedom of expression will be at risk, as the bloggers’ trial shows. In the grand scheme of things, Bangladesh has bigger problems to worry about. The sooner courts quash charges against the bloggers, the easier it will be for the state to diffuse tensions.