With four atheist bloggers murdered in copycat attacks in the last seven months, Bangladesh is now perhaps the riskiest place in the world for blogging. The latest in the line has been Niloy Neel (Niloy Chaterjee) who was hacked to death with a machete in his home in downtown Dhaka on August 7. His partner Asha Moni was held at gunpoint while a gang of youth slaughtered him and melted into the streets of Bangladesh’s capital. The use of firearms is, however, new, as while killing Ananta Bijoy Das or Avijit Roy, the assailants had always preferred sharp weapons. Having said that, the murder bears all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda, which in a statement later claimed responsibility. After Neel’s killing, Ansar Al-Islam, the Bangladesh franchise of Maulana Asim Omar-led Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), had sent an email to the local dailies and it has been uncharacteristically poetic, “If you think freedom of speech knows no bounds, your heart should also remain open to the freedom of our machete.”
Even though the police have claimed to make some significant headway into the serial killing of bloggers, a sense of apprehension shrouds the sincerity of the government in bringing the criminals to the book. Even before Neel was cremated following Hindu rituals, the ruling Awami League (AL) ministers had openly called for the arrest of those who have hurt the “religious sentiments” of the country’s majority Muslims. And there is a strong reason behind it. There is no denying that in the last few years, political Islam has gained a strong foothold in the country. The results of the recent local body polls is a case in point. In the last sub-district (upazilla) elections held in 2014, Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) has bagged more votes in total than its senior alliance partner Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The latter scored 33 percent votes in the 2008 general election and the JI only 4 percent, but, as the results of the upazilla elections suggest, Bangladesh’s politics have gone through a sea change in the last six years.
In hindsight, it might look no less than surprising that the JI, which does not wield any significant fan following in its birthplace Pakistan, might become a serious contender for power in Bangladesh. Especially after two of its leaders were hanged for collaborating with the ‘occupying’ Pakistan Army during the country’s liberation war in 1971. Add to that the self-destructive street agitation programmes that the JI leadership had launched, especially the ones that had witnessed the deaths of hundreds of its student activists. But the JI had used the weakening strength of the BNP rather well. And for the first time in its controversial history the Islamist party has far more supporters than its members. BNP, the centre-right party, is a skeleton of its previous self. The party, which had ruled the country for 14 years in four terms, is in disarray. Some of its leaders have compromised with the government, and the rest have become inactive. There are two instances where party activists in Dhaka had ignored the party Chairperson’s call to occupy the streets of the capital to topple the government.
Politics do not allow vacuum. The JI has quickly filled the space the BNP has left behind. That, however, does not bode well for Bangladesh. Funny it may sound, the JI is the softest Islamist alternative that Bangladesh is presently left with. The other rightwing parties are more radicalised, and the rest are terrorists. The killing of the bloggers and the ordinary people’s subsequent silence tells us that Bangladesh’s polity is increasingly leaning towards the right, and, under what seems like an unpopular government, it might tilt towards something even worse. The worst, perhaps, is in the making – the police have arrested a suspected terrorist who was a member of the JI’s student wing, an organisation he had left for AQIS as he thought the JI was too soft on infidels. Another worrying development is the spillover effect of terrorism, a dangerous trend that we had seen in the Burdwan, India blasts, where Bangladeshi terrorists had used Indian territory to destabilise Sheikh Hasina-led AL government.
For Bangladesh, the way out lies in a dialogue among all the BNP and stakeholders of the country over the formation of an election-time government that will help the Election Commission to oversee the polls. The dialogue should also include the future of the JI and the war crimes trial. There is no denying that the AL is the only strong secular party that Bangladesh has, but the absence of a proper democratic environment will eat away the country’s secular institutions, which, in the longer run, will breed extremism. That explains the rising fanaticism in Bangladesh and a large number of ordinary people’s silence in the aftermath of the murder of bloggers.
Ahmede Hussain is a Bangladeshi author, editor and journalist. He is now based in Dhaka.
Twitter: @ahmedehussain
Even though the police have claimed to make some significant headway into the serial killing of bloggers, a sense of apprehension shrouds the sincerity of the government in bringing the criminals to the book. Even before Neel was cremated following Hindu rituals, the ruling Awami League (AL) ministers had openly called for the arrest of those who have hurt the “religious sentiments” of the country’s majority Muslims. And there is a strong reason behind it. There is no denying that in the last few years, political Islam has gained a strong foothold in the country. The results of the recent local body polls is a case in point. In the last sub-district (upazilla) elections held in 2014, Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) has bagged more votes in total than its senior alliance partner Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The latter scored 33 percent votes in the 2008 general election and the JI only 4 percent, but, as the results of the upazilla elections suggest, Bangladesh’s politics have gone through a sea change in the last six years.
In hindsight, it might look no less than surprising that the JI, which does not wield any significant fan following in its birthplace Pakistan, might become a serious contender for power in Bangladesh. Especially after two of its leaders were hanged for collaborating with the ‘occupying’ Pakistan Army during the country’s liberation war in 1971. Add to that the self-destructive street agitation programmes that the JI leadership had launched, especially the ones that had witnessed the deaths of hundreds of its student activists. But the JI had used the weakening strength of the BNP rather well. And for the first time in its controversial history the Islamist party has far more supporters than its members. BNP, the centre-right party, is a skeleton of its previous self. The party, which had ruled the country for 14 years in four terms, is in disarray. Some of its leaders have compromised with the government, and the rest have become inactive. There are two instances where party activists in Dhaka had ignored the party Chairperson’s call to occupy the streets of the capital to topple the government.
JI bagged more votes than BNP in the 2014 sub-district elections
Politics do not allow vacuum. The JI has quickly filled the space the BNP has left behind. That, however, does not bode well for Bangladesh. Funny it may sound, the JI is the softest Islamist alternative that Bangladesh is presently left with. The other rightwing parties are more radicalised, and the rest are terrorists. The killing of the bloggers and the ordinary people’s subsequent silence tells us that Bangladesh’s polity is increasingly leaning towards the right, and, under what seems like an unpopular government, it might tilt towards something even worse. The worst, perhaps, is in the making – the police have arrested a suspected terrorist who was a member of the JI’s student wing, an organisation he had left for AQIS as he thought the JI was too soft on infidels. Another worrying development is the spillover effect of terrorism, a dangerous trend that we had seen in the Burdwan, India blasts, where Bangladeshi terrorists had used Indian territory to destabilise Sheikh Hasina-led AL government.
For Bangladesh, the way out lies in a dialogue among all the BNP and stakeholders of the country over the formation of an election-time government that will help the Election Commission to oversee the polls. The dialogue should also include the future of the JI and the war crimes trial. There is no denying that the AL is the only strong secular party that Bangladesh has, but the absence of a proper democratic environment will eat away the country’s secular institutions, which, in the longer run, will breed extremism. That explains the rising fanaticism in Bangladesh and a large number of ordinary people’s silence in the aftermath of the murder of bloggers.
Ahmede Hussain is a Bangladeshi author, editor and journalist. He is now based in Dhaka.
Twitter: @ahmedehussain