Ahmed Rajib Haider | |
---|---|
আহমেদ রাজিব হায়দার | |
Died | |
Nationality | Bangladeshi |
Education | Bachelor of Architecture |
Alma mater | University of Asia Pacific, Bangladesh. |
Occupation | Architect |
Ahmed Rajib Haider (died 15 February 2013) was a Bangladeshi atheist blogger. [1] He used to blog in the blogging communities namely somewhereinblog.net, amarblog.com and nagorikblog.com [2] and used the pseudonym Thaba Baba. [3]
On 15 February 2013, after comments he posted online about religious fundamentalism, he was hacked to death by machete-wielding terrorists from a militant group named Ansarullah Bangla Team. He was the first protester killed during the Shahbag movement. [4] [5]
An architect by profession, Haider's blog was among those that ignited the 2013 Shahbag protests. The protesters were seeking trials for the perpetrators of the mass killings during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, a move that was widely seen as aimed at radical Islamists. [6] The protests were opposed by Islamic groups, who organised counter marches under the banner of a newly formed group called Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh. [7]
On 30 December 2015, after almost three years, two members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, Md Faisal Bin Nayem and Redwanul Azad Rana, were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Faisal, the court said, was the one who attacked Haider with a meat cleaver. [8] Rana had absconded and was sentenced in absentia. Another member of the outlawed outfit, Maksudul Hasan was also found guilty of murder and given a life sentence. [8] Six other members of ABT, including firebrand leader Mufti Jasim Uddin Rahmani, received jail terms of five to ten years. [9]
Haider, a self-proclaimed atheist, posted his blogs under the pseudonym Thaba Baba, where he questioned the historical authenticity of Islam. The content of his writings were deemed "blasphemous" by religious hardliners, resulting in them demanding blasphemy laws be instituted and that he be killed. [10] [11] [12]
On the night of 15 February 2013, Haider was attacked as he was leaving his house in the Mirpur area of Dhaka. His body was found lying in a pool of blood, [13] mutilated to the point that his friends could not recognise him. [7] The following day, his coffin was carried bearing the national flag through Shahbagh Square in a public protest by more than 100,000 people. [14] Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited his family in Palashnagar, Dhaka, and promised action.
On 2 March, the Bangladesh Detective bureau arrested five members of the newly formed extremist organisation Ansarullah Bangla Team for the murder. [5] The five students, Faisal bin Nayeem alias Dwip, Maksudul Hassan Anik, Ehsan Reza Rumman, Naim Sikder Irad, and Nafis Imtiaz, confessed to the crime in front of a magistrate. [15] The students came from affluent backgrounds. [16] The day before the murder, Anik, Raza and Irad played cricket in the grounds in front of Haider's house, as part of the "Intel team". [15] Two of the masterminds of the attack were sentenced to death. [17]
The incident occurred at the peak of the 2013 Shahbag protests in Bangladesh. Though attacks against atheist and other secular-minded writers were not a new phenomenon in Bangladesh, the death of the 30-year-old architect and Shahbag activist brought the struggle of Bangladeshi freethinkers greater prominence. [18]
Haider's murder is seen as part of a larger attack against atheist and secularist bloggers in Bangladesh. Islamic groups had been rallying for a blasphemy law along the lines of the Blasphemy law in Pakistan. [19] A month before the attack on Haider, blogger Asif Mohiuddin was attacked outside his house by four youths, [20] also from the Ansarullah Bengali Team. Although seriously injured, Asif survived. His attackers were apprehended in April 2013 based on leads from the Haider murder investigation. [16] Another controversial author, blogger & online activist named Sunnyur Rahman, popularly known as 'Nastik Nobi' (Atheist Prophet) in the blog community, was also stabbed on 7 March 2013. [21]
In March 2013 Asif's blog in somewhereinblog.net was shut down by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. In April, Asif was arrested for "blasphemous" posts, [22] along with three other bloggers, a move protested by the 2013 Bengali blog blackout. [23] The crackdown on independent blogs, and the closure of the newspaper Amar Desh, was strongly criticised by Human Rights Watch [24] and IHEU. [25] [26] Shortly after the bloggers were arrested, Mukto-Mona, an independent site of freethinkers and atheists of mainly Bengali and South Asian descent, issued a statement titled, 'Bangladesh government squishing freedom of speech by arresting and harassing young bloggers inside the country'. [27] Amnesty International also issued a statement titled, 'Bangladesh: writers at risk of torture’. [28]
The Center for Inquiry (CFI), requested the US Secretary of State John Kerry "pressure the government of Bangladesh to reverse its policy of arresting atheist bloggers who were critical to religion." They sent a letter to Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook "to do all they can to raise public awareness of this situation." Other influential organisations such as the Free Society Institute of South Africa, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Global Voice Advocacy, and several other bodies also called for the immediate release of the Bangladeshi bloggers and appealed to several foreign authorities to press Bangladesh on the issue. [29]
Worldwide protest and demonstrations were held on 25 April and 2 May 2013, to put pressure on the Bangladeshi government to free the arrested bloggers. Several humanist groups (including CFU, CFI-Canada, the British Humanist Association, American Atheists, Secular Coalition for America, and Freethinkers of University of Missouri's campus) took part in cities the US, Canada, the UK, and Bangladesh. [30] Many writers, activists, and prominent intellectuals around the world including Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin, Hemant Mehta, Maryam Namazie, PZ Myers, Avijit Roy, Anu Muhammad, Ajoy Roy, Qayyum Chowdhury, Ramendu Majumdar, Muhammad Zafar Iqbal publicly expressed their solidarity with the arrested bloggers. [30] Three of the arrested bloggers eventually were released on bail, [31] however the court denied bail for Asif Mohiuddin and he was sent to prison on 2 June 2013. [32] He was released after three months but still faces charges. [33] [34]
In 2015 alone, at least five more secular writers and publishers were murdered by Islamists:
In addition, publishers Ahmedur Rashid Tutul and bloggers Ranadipam Basu and Tareq Rahim were severely injured in machete-wielding attacks in 2015. [43] [44]
Humanists International is an international non-governmental organisation championing secularism and human rights, motivated by secular humanist values. Founded in Amsterdam in 1952, it is an umbrella organisation made up of more than 160 secular humanist, atheist, rationalist, agnostic, skeptic, freethought and Ethical Culture organisations from over 80 countries.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is an independent commission founded under the Bangladesh Telecommunication Act, 2001. The BTRC is responsible for regulating all matters related to telecommunications of Bangladesh. The chairman of the commission has the status of a judge of the Bangladesh High Court. Md. Emdad-Ul-Bari is the chairman of the commission.
On 5 February 2013, protests ignited in Shahbagh, Bangladesh, fueled by the call for the execution of the convicted war criminal Abdul Quader Mollah. Previously sentenced to life imprisonment, Mollah was convicted on five of six counts of war crimes by the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh. Mollah supported the West Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and played a crucial role in the murder of numerous Bengali nationalists and intellectuals. The demonstrations also sought the government's ban on the radical right-wing and conservative-Islamist group, Jamaat-e-Islami from participating in politics, including elections, and a boycott of institutions supporting or affiliated with the group.
2013 (MMXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2013th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 13th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 4th year of the 2010s decade.
On 4 April 2013 all Bengali blogs were blacked out for an indefinite time to protest the arrest of four bloggers in Bangladesh. The blackout was to back a demand for the unconditional release of the arrested bloggers. A fundamentalist group named Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh started a campaign to hang freethinking bloggers, and demanding tough blasphemy laws. In response, the government started monitoring Bengali blog sites and sending letters to their authorities to terminate the alleged "anti-religious" blogs and provide information about the alleged "anti-religious" bloggers. Individual bloggers showed their solidarity with this blackout by changing their profile photos on Facebook and by tweeting with the #MuzzleMeNot hashtag. Different international organizations expressed deep concern about taking free-thinking bloggers into custody. After 92 hours of blackout, blogs returned online by publishing a press release on their central Facebook page.
The Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), also known as Ansar-al Islam Bangladesh or Ansar Bangla is a pan-Islamist militant organization in Bangladesh, implicated in many terrorist activities including attacks and murders of atheist bloggers from 2013 to 2015. The organisation was outlawed by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 25 May 2015, days after the Ashulia bank robbery. The group has also been linked by the Detective Branch of Bangladesh Police to Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party.
The Worldwide Protests for Free Expression in Bangladesh were a series of rallies outside Bangladeshi embassies and consulates to demand the release of four Bangladeshi bloggers who had been arrested on charges of blasphemy. The protests took place on 25 April – 2 May 2013 and were organised by the Center for Inquiry (CFI), American Atheists, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Demonstrations were held in Dhaka, New York City, Washington, D.C., London, Ottawa and other cities around the world. Secularists sought to express their solidarity with those jailed for speaking their minds about religion. Protesters drew attention to those who were being persecuted for exercising free speech, seeking to convince the international community to exert influence to have the bloggers set free by the Bangladeshi government.
Irreligion in Bangladesh is rare and uncommon publicly. A Gallup survey conducted between 2014 and 2015 found that approximately less than 1% identified as convinced atheists in the poll. Bangladesh has 165.2 million people as of the 2022 census.
2015 (MMXV) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2015th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 15th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 6th year of the 2010s decade.
Bangladesh has experienced terrorism in the past conducted by a number of different organisations. In the past, both ISIL and other terrorist organisations had claimed to be active in the country. However, the Bangladeshi government believes that they mainly operated through local affiliates, before being neutralised by security forces.
Avijit Roy was a Bangladeshi-American engineer, online activist, writer, and blogger known for creating and administrating the Mukto-Mona, an Internet blogging community for Bangladeshi freethinkers, rationalists, skeptics, atheists, and humanists. Roy was an advocate of free expression in Bangladesh and coordinated international protests against government censorship and imprisonment of atheist bloggers. He was killed by machete-wielding assailants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 26 February 2015; the Islamic militant organization Ansarullah Bangla Team claimed responsibility for the attack.
Asif Mohiuddin is a Bangladeshi atheist and secular activist, religious critic and feminist. In 2012, he won The Bobs-Best of Online Activism award from Deutsche Welle, who stated that "Asif's blog was one of the most read web pages in Bangladesh and is known for its strong criticism of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh's "anti-people politics", his blog was later blocked and banned in Bangladesh by its government. On 15 January 2013, he survived an assassination attempt by Islamic extremists. A few months later, he was imprisoned twice by the Bangladesh Government for posting "offensive comments about Islam and Mohammad". Due to sustained international pressure, Mohiuddin was released, after which he fled from his country to Germany in 2014. In 2015, he received the Anna Politkovskaya Prize for Journalism, awarded by Italian magazine Internazionale.
Rafida Bonya Ahmed is a Bangladeshi-American who is a writer, blogger, and humanitarian activist. In 2020, she founded the educational channels Think Bangla and Think English on YouTube. Along with her husband Avijit Roy, she was attacked and badly wounded by machete-wielding Islamic extremists at the Ekushey Book Fair in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2015, and Roy was killed.
Attacks by Islamist extremists in Bangladesh took place during a period of turbulence in Bangladesh between 2013 and 2016 when a number of secularist and atheist writers, bloggers, and publishers in Bangladesh; foreigners; homosexuals; and religious minorities such as Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Ahmadis who were seen as having offended Islam and Muhammad were attacked in retaliation, with many killed by Muslim extremists. By 2 July 2016, a total of 48 people, including 20 foreign nationals, had been killed in such attacks. These attacks were largely blamed on extremist groups such as Ansarullah Bangla Team and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Bangladeshi government was criticized for its response to the attacks, which included charging and jailing some of the secularist bloggers for allegedly defaming some religious groups; or hurting the religious sentiments of different religious groups; or urging the bloggers to flee overseas. This strategy was seen by some as pandering to hard line elements within Bangladesh's Muslim majority population. About 89% of the population in Bangladesh is Sunni Muslim. The government's eventual crackdown in June 2016 was also criticized for its heavy-handedness, as more than 11,000 people were arrested in a little more than a week.
Mukto-Mona is a Bengali language blog for secularists, atheists, and freethinkers. It was founded by Avijit Roy who was subsequently killed by militants in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The attackers are believed to be members of Ansarullah Bangla Team.
Kaberi Gayen is a Bangladeshi academic, author, and social activist known for her outspoken views on the oppression of minorities and gender inequality in Bangladesh.
Muhammad Jasimuddin Rahmani, also known as Mufti Jasimuddin Rahmani is an Imam from Bangladesh. He was the Imam of Hatembagh Jame Masjid in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Jasimusdun Rahmani was allegedly the chief of an Al Qaeda affiliated, militant organization Ansarullah Bangla Team. He was in custody in Bangladesh charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act. He supported the murder of islamophobe atheist bloggers.
Blogging in Bangladesh is dominated by a community of around 200 blogs. Some personal blogs have been around since the mid-2000s, but there are now blogs about self help, cities, science, law, digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and fashion magazines.
Asaduzzaman Noor, better known as Asad Noor, is an exiled Bangladeshi blogger and human rights activist. Noor is an advocate for freedom of expression and LGBT rights, who has criticised religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh. He has been prosecuted multiple times by Bangladeshi authorities for alleged blasphemy and hurting religious sentiments. He has been living in exile since 2019.He faces significant life-threatening risks from Islamic fundamentalists due to his outspoken criticism and repeated exposure of their activities through his activism.
On February 19, 2013, Shah Ahmad Shafi, leader of Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh, published an open letter to the public and the government on the front page of Amar Desh. In the letter, he condemned the ongoing Shahbag protests, claiming they were tied to anti-Islamic activities. He accused the Ahmadiyya community and an anti-Islamic online group of involvement, naming individuals such as Shahriar Kabir, Muntassir Mamoon, Zafar Iqbal, Gholam Rabbani, and Ajoy Roy as responsible. Shafi called on the government to take action against these activities and urged the public to speak out against them. This letter marked Hefazat-e-Islam's entry into the political landscape, initiating the Islamist response to the Shahbag protests and leading to the development of its 13-point demand.