Blogging in Bangladesh
“Five violent deaths, nine months, and no final convictions.” That’s how Rezaur Rahman summed up the risks of blogging in Bangladesh these days. The “five violent deaths” of four Bangladeshi bloggers Avijit Roy, Washiqur Rahman Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das, and Niloy Chatterjee, and publisher Faisal Arefin Dipon, took place between February 26 and August 6, 2015. As Rahman explained, these men were seen by some “as champions of secularism and free speech,” and by others as a “challenge to religious hardliners and fundamentalists.” These were not the first bloggers and activists to be threatened or murdered. In 2013, Asif Mohiuddin was brutally attacked and Ahmed Rajib Haider was hacked to death.
Rahman made his remarks during a brief introduction to a screening of “An Attack on Bloggers,” a documentary that was first shown on AlJazeera television in November 2015. The film chronicles the events that have taken place in Bangladesh during the last year, and includes interviews with people who are continuing to blog despite the enormous risks, and some family members of bloggers who have been brutally murdered and attacked. Some bloggers such as Asif Mohiuddin are now living in exile while others have remained in Bangladesh, sometimes in hiding.
The documentary also explores some of the issues that the bloggers have raised and the social movements that they have triggered in Bangladesh. In 2013, for example, the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh sentenced Abdul Quader Mollah to life imprisonment for crimes he had committed during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Many, including prominent online activists and bloggers Imran H Sarker, Rasel Parvez, Shammi Haq, and others considered his sentence too lenient and called on those who agreed with them to join the protests that were already taking place at Shahbag. Largely in response to their call, the demonstration at Shahbag grew to become the largest in Bangladesh in 20 years. The government, surprised and concerned by the ability of just a few bloggers and online activists working alone to mobilize large numbers of people, and to do so quickly, began to see them as a threat to public security.
Others in Bangladesh oppose the bloggers because of their views and opinions. Although secularism is enshrined in the constitution of Bangladesh, there are religious hardliners and fundamentalists in the country who feel justified in attacking bloggers who identify themselves as secularists, or write things they deem to be offensive to Islam.
The murder of some bloggers in Bangladesh, the continued attacks and threats against online activists, and the government’s response to these attacks is threatening freedom of expression in Bangladesh. Rather than aggressively investigating the crimes that have been committed against bloggers and online activists, the government has enacted laws to restrict what bloggers write about.
These developments were highlighted in Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2016 that was issued in late January. It noted: “Freedom of speech came under increasing attack [in Bangladesh]. Media critical of the government continued to face closure, and editors faced charges and arrest.”
Rezaur Rahman is the executive director of Law Life Culture (a Dhaka-based rights organization). He has worked for international media outlets as an investigative journalist and has been involved in the production of several documentaries about human rights, including “An Attack on Bloggers.” He spoke during a presentation at the Center for Media, Data and Society at the School of Public Policy at CEU on January 27, 2016.