Bangladesh's existential threat

Until a few years ago, people in Bangladesh used to exhale a sigh of relief whenever there were tragic events of violent extremism in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

They took pride in defining themselves against a country they considered full of religious bigots responsible for carrying out bloody attacks on minorities and brave citizens who oppose extremism.

They felt satisfied that their forefathers had parted ways with Pakistan to make way for an independent Bangladesh through the 1971 war.

In recent times, this sense of relief, pride and satisfaction has been fading fast with a gradual rise of religious intolerance and extremism in the country.

Since 2013, Bangladesh has seen seven secular bloggers, writers and publishers brutally murdered, allegedly by Islamist militants, including four bloggers and one publisher this year alone. Only one blogger narrowly escaped death. Their writings and publications were critical of religion and the political use of religion, especially Islam.

By the time Bangladesh was reeling from the killings of an Italian aid worker and a Japanese man in September and October, alleged jihadists bombed a Shiite festival in Dhaka, killing two and injuring dozens on Oct. 24.

In the latest episode, two groups of attackers entered two publishing houses in Dhaka and hacked two publishers and two writers with machetes and cleavers on Oct. 31. Faisal Arefin Dipan, owner of Jagriti Prokashony, died of his wounds inside the locked office, while Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, owner of Suddhaswar, and his two writer friends were critically wounded.

Dipan and Tutul had earlier printed books by U.S.-based Bangladeshi blogger and science writer Avijit Roy, hacked to death on the streets of Dhaka in February, allegedly by militants.

In March 2014, a popular Bangladesh online bookstore had stopped selling Roy's books after a local Islamist extremist issued death threats to its owner.

Ansarullah Bangla Team, a banned local militant outfit, presumably linked to al-Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, claimed responsibility for attacks on bloggers and publishers. The Islamic State jihadist group has taken credit for the killings of the two foreigners and for bombing the Shia festival.

In September, Ansarullah Bangla Team published a hit list of 20 Bangladeshi bloggers based in the United States and Europe. Some of these bloggers have dual citizenship; some of them fled the country during the past two years after death threats.

Fearing extremist attacks, several prominent writers and bloggers have already withdrawn from critical writings; many have taken measures to ensure security in their public life.

 A grave threat

The persecution of freethinkers in Bangladesh is not without precedence.

In 1994, radical Islamists issued death threats to Taslima Nasrin, a prominent female writer, for her writings on feminism and criticism of religion. She has been living in exile ever since. 

In 2004, Humayun Azad, a renowned linguist and author, escaped a brutal assassination attempt in Dhaka, after he wrote a political satire that criticizes the political use of Islam. Azad later died in his sleep during a trip to Germany, largely due to trauma over the attack.

In 2013, Hefazat-e-Islam, a radical Islamic group, published a list of 84 secular bloggers and marched in Dhaka demanding the execution of atheist bloggers and the installation of a blasphemy law. The group is allegedly linked to country's largest radical Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami, whose entire leadership is being prosecuted for war crimes during Bangladesh's liberation war.

Jamaat opposed Bangladesh's independence. It stands accused of helping the Pakistan army in the torture and massacre of pro-independence people, including some 200 Bengali intellectuals during the war.

Many believe that Jamaat has sponsored Hefazat-e-Islam to hunt the bloggers, who were at the forefront of organizing a massive rally called the "Shahbag movement" for the trial and execution of all war criminals.

Whether the attackers of freethinkers have their base in international jihadist groups like al-Qaida or the Islamic State, or in local Islamic political parties, they pose a grave threat to Bangladesh's existence.

Recently, there has been a growing dispute between Western intelligence services and Bangladesh's government over who is responsible for the recent spate of attacks. Foreign intelligence services claim they have passed credible information to the government on the activities of the Islamic State jihadist group. But the government has repeatedly refused the claim and stressed that the attacks came from within — from extremists allied with opposition political parties.

Frustratingly, the government has failed to prove opposition links to extremist violence and refused to consider alternative explanations linking international terror groups.

Most apathetically, the home minister called the recent attacks "isolated incidents" that could happen anywhere in the world. Earlier, the police chief admonished bloggers for their writings and warned them not to "cross the line."

Emboldening extremism

Ironically, the deceased freethinkers have been largely supportive of the so-called secular ruling Awami League government that led the country during the independence struggles.

The government has failed to conduct a proper probe, and to deliver justice for bloggers, which ultimately emboldens the extremists. Moreover, it has refrained from taking the side of bloggers publicly, and didn't do enough to protect them.

Freethinkers are the architects of a nation; they are revered and loved for their contributions. Sadly, a nation that was born with the guiding light of freethinkers, through the independence war in 1971, is collectively failing to protect them from the onslaught of persecution. Everyone including the government, civil society and common people must take blame for this failure.

Apart from an end to socioeconomic oppression, Bangladesh's independence was a victory for a moderate form of Islam practiced by the majority of Muslims in this part of the world.

The country's founding fathers inserted secularism and freedom of thought as key principles of the constitution, in order to make Bangladesh a true democracy with respect for a multitude of religions, ethnicities and differences of opinion. Due to the bitter experience with Pakistan, the country's founders banned religion-based politics, constitutionally.

The march toward a secular, democratic society was halted with the assassination of the country's founding leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in a 1975 military coup and the subsequent military rule of the next 15 years, which led to a revival of Islamic parties and religion-based politics.

Democracy was restored in the early 1990s, but the influence of Islamists continued, which ultimately gave birth to several homegrown militant outfits since 2000 that were responsible for attacking anything they deemed un-Islamic.

The government has struggled to contain these jihadists, who aim to make Bangladesh an Islamic state.

As the attacks on freethinkers continue, a climate of fear and insecurity has gripped people. They now question whether they are still the proud citizens of a country that has a long history of tolerance and religious harmony. They wonder if the country is still committed to its founding principles of secularism and freedom of thought.

Despite being a Muslim-majority country, a strong sense of nationalism based on culture, rational thinking, religious and ethnic diversity has been a core value of Bangladesh.

The extremists are out on the streets to wipe out rationalist freethinkers in order to pave the way for an Islamic state. If the government fails to stop this rising tide of intolerance and extremism, a similar fate could await Bangladesh as what is being seen in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Middle East countries.

No doubt, Bangladesh is at an identity crisis. As freethinkers bemoan the loss of their space in society and the pen's diminished power amid the preying of machete-wielding extremists, a disaster is looming for Bangladesh.

If Bangladesh fails to protect freethinkers from intolerance and extremists, the nation will be devoured from within by radicals, and ultimately fall apart.

END

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In Bangladesh, murders of atheist bloggers show dangers of apathy

Hundreds of students and secular activists this week peacefully marched in Sylhet, a city in northeastern Bangladesh. They gathered to mourn and to protest the heinous killing of atheist blogger and writer Ananta Bijoy Das, allegedly by machete-wielding Islamic militants.

The protesters demanded justice for the killing and criticized the Awami League government for failing to protect free thinkers like Das from the fury of religious fanatics. They also condemned a culture of impunity amid a string of attacks on secular writers and bloggers in the country in recent years. “The government must crush this evil force now,” some chanted during the protest, “or this evil force will crush Bangladesh one day.”

But sadly, Das’ death is unlikely to cause any ripple effect in the waters of this nation’s 160 million people, despite garnering massive international media coverage.

For more than a decade, a war of words between secularists and Islamists has been a common topic on the country’s social media and blogosphere. And now the fanatics are vigorously carrying out their agenda by taking the war onto the streets.

Das, 33, was a banker, editor and blogger who promoted scientific ideas and rationalism through his writing. He became the third recent victim in what has been a one-sided war: Avijit Roy, a US-based Bangladeshi writer and blogger was murdered in February, while blogger Washiqur Rahman was killed a month later.

Now, more than four decades after gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh is once again at a crossroads.

The nation’s victory during the war defined Bangladesh as a secular, democratic nation. But the cold-blooded killings of the bloggers in broad daylight show the ghosts of the past are back from the shadows.

It remains to be seen whether or not the perpetrators of these killings have been supported by Islamist parties or more radical groups. But it is clear they have an agenda: to wipe our rationalists and secularists.

No doubt their bases are strong. But there is an even greater force that helps them to thrive: a serious lack of sympathy and action from the public, civil society and the ruling and opposition parties amid growing religious intolerance.

“This was well-planned, choreographed — a global act of terrorism. But what almost bothers me more is that no one from the Bangladesh government has reached out to me,” Rafida Ahmed Bonya, widow of slain blogger Roy, told Reuters in a recent interview, criticizing the Bangladesh government for not responding more aggressively to her husband’s killing.

“It’s as if I don’t exist, and they are afraid of the extremists. Is Bangladesh going to be the next Pakistan or Afghanistan?”

In response, Sajeeb Wazed, the son of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and an informal advisor to the ruling party, said his mother offered personal condolences to Roy's father. But his explanation of what he believes to be Bangladesh’s volatile political situation is telling.

“We are walking a fine line here. We don’t want to be seen as atheists. It doesn’t change our core beliefs. We believe in secularism,” he said. “But given that our opposition party plays that religion card against us relentlessly, we can’t come out strongly for him. It’s about perception, not about reality.”

Although police made arrests after the attacks, there is still a lack of genuine interest in punishing the killers, leaving the cases in limbo. There is also no clear-cut political commitment to tackle the rise of Islamic militancy.

The ruling Awami League, in power since 2008, led the nation during the independence struggle and calls itself a secular, center-left party. But it has done little to crack down on Islamists and punish those who attack bloggers. The party has refrained from publicly condemning the attacks on the bloggers and has done almost nothing to protect them.

In fear of losing votes during the last election, the government went on to appease Islamists by arresting several bloggers and erasing hundreds of blog posts.

The center-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the second largest party, has maintained an utter silence on the matter, fearing backlash from longtime ally Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest radical Islamist party.

In fact, BNP has a record of siding with Islamists since the founding of the party by military dictator Ziaur Rahman in 1978. After swarming into power in 1977, Ziaur Rahman allowed religion-based politics and Islamic parties that had been banned after the independence war. He amended the original constitution of 1972 and added “absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah”, replacing the socialist religious-free commitment to “secularism” as one of the four key principles, in order to make the country more Islamic.

In the preamble of the constitution he asserted the Islamic phrase “Bismillahir-Rahmaanir-Rahim"("In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful"). Power has altered between Awami League and BNP since the return to parliamentary democracy in the 1990s, but none of the parties dared to make the constitution truly secular and democratic. After a Supreme Court verdict in 2010 in favor of secular principles, the Awami League reasserted ‘secularism’ in the constitution, but didn’t change Bismillahir-Rahmaanir-Rahim or touch Islam as the state religion.

From 2001 to 2006, the BNP-Jamaat alliance ruled the country and their five-year rule saw a massive rise in Islamic militancy. Militant outfits carried out a series of bomb attacks on cultural programs, political rallies and courts deemed un-Islamic. At the height of the attacks, a militant group detonated some 500 bombs in 63 of the 64 districts of Bangladesh on August 17, 2005. At the time, many feared the country was plunging into a civil war like that waged by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Amid a media outcry and international pressure, the government banned two militant groups — Harkat-ul-Jihad and Jamaat-ul-Mujahedin Bangladesh — and arrested and executed their top leaders. Although many members of these groups went into hiding, recent media reports suggest they are regrouping under different banners and recruiting university students. Ansarullah Bangla Team, one of those regrouped militant outfits, claimed responsibility for blogger Washiqur Rahman’s murder.

Experts say these groups are thriving amid the recent feuds and political violence between the Awami League and BNP. As the government and opposition keep busy hunting each other, fanatics are advancing their own agendas.

Nobody is doing enough to resist the rising tide of religious fundamentalism. The government is apathetic, civil society is indifferent, and the masses are simply silent.

History shows us that letting religious fanaticism thrive is dangerous and disastrous in the long run. The war waged by the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan didn’t happen in a day.

Bangladesh used to be called one of the most moderate Muslim countries in the world, but that is no more.

When the nation as a whole feels no urge to act when a writer is killed in broad daylight, it is a troubling sign indeed.

Unless there is a change of mind in all quarters of the nation on the issue, there is no doubt that evil forces will one day swallow and control Bangladesh.

Bangladesh needs to rise to the challenge before it’s too late.

END

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Land grabbing drives lawlessness and deaths in Bangladesh

An indigenous Santal man in Dinajpur district (Photo: Rock Ronald Rozario)

In separate incidents last week, a tribal Santal man was murdered, and an Oraon woman was gang raped by Muslim men in northern Bangladesh. A local member of the ruling Awami League Party was charged and arrested for the rape.

In Rangpur district, 10 policemen guard Christ the Savior Catholic Church after an armed attack on priests and nuns, allegedly by a Muslim mob, on July 7.

Asaduzzaman Saja Fakir, a member of the opposition Jatiya Party, known for his anti-tribal and anti-Church activities, is thought to be behind the attack. For years, the Church has resisted Fakir’s attempts to illegally occupy a piece of land owned by a Church-run school.

On July 24, police in Naogaon district exhumed the body of Ovidio Marandy, a top government official and tribal Santal Catholic, for a post-mortem.

Marandy, 32, was a vocal opponent of land grabs. Prior to his death on January 11, he had clashed with Abul Kalam Azad, an Awami League parliamentarian from Govindaganj in Gaibandha district accused of grabbing some 40 hectares of land from local tribal people since the 1980s.

Before he was buried, Marandy’s family noted that neither his injuries nor the damage to his vehicle matched the “road accident” story. It took more than six months for them to secure a post-mortem.

Meanhwile, seven tribal Oraon Catholic men are languishing in jail after they were falsely charged with the murder of a Muslim man in Bolakipur area in Dinajpur district in June last year.

Azizur Prodhan and his cousin Mofazzal Prodhan, also a member of the Awami League, have been in dispute with tribals in the area over land that they say they purchased legally nearly 40 years ago, and allegedly instigated an attack on local tribal Catholic villagers.

The man whom they say was murdered died of a heart attack during the counter-attack. Franciscan Father Jerome Rozario, assistant pastor at Mariampur Catholic Church, claims the Prodhans bribed police and doctors to get a medical certificate claiming that it was murder.

Five different cases, but all have one common cause – battles over land. Police made arrests in each case, but justice is likely to be elusive.

The victims are Christian and non-Christian tribal people, from predominantly tribal areas. In at least four out of the five cases, the aggressors wield considerable political clout.

Denial of justice

Hunger for land is inevitable in Bangladesh, a nation of 160 million people crammed into just 147,570 square kilometers.

A population boom has fueled the hunger. This largely agricultural, Muslim-majority nation has lost vast areas of land due to the demands of housing, urbanization and industrialization.

“About three million civil and criminal court cases are rolling in Bangladesh judiciary, and 75 percent are related to land disputes,” said Shamsul Huda, executive director of the Association for Land Reform and Development, a Dhaka-based advocacy group.

In this low lying river delta country, the shifting of rivers, an outdated land record system, forgery and corruption are blamed for many of the land disputes. With the legal system still too expensive and with little government incentive, the poor and marginalized are often denied justice.

“Our legal system is discriminatory, anti-poor and anti-indigenous people,” Huda said. “It always favors the rich and powerful. They can go to police and bribe them and they can even influence the judiciary. But the poor can do nothing. In 99 percent of cases true justice is never done.”

Christians, the majority of them Catholics, make up less than half a percent of the population, and nearly half of them belong to ethnic tribal groups.

Most tribals migrated from various Indian states during British rule to work as agricultural and day workers. The British gave them land to live on and cultivate, mostly with verbal permission. This paperless allocation has contributed to many of the current conflicts with Muslims.

“In the past, there have been dozens of attacks from land grabbers on tribals, and at least 10 Christians have been killed. No case has seen justice yet,” said Nirmol Rozario, secretary of the Bangladesh Christian Association. “This culture of impunity encourages more attacks.”

Rabindranath Soren, president of the Jatiya Adivasi Parishad tribal rights group, says about 140 tribal people have been killed and more than a dozen tribal women raped for their land in the past four decades. It has forced some 10,000 tribal people to migrate to India.

“Tribal people face systematic violence for land, but the government and local administration are apathetic towards them,” Soren said. “Our constitutional right to live as equal citizens of the country is being violated but no one seems to bother.”

Rights activist Rosaline Costa from Hotline Human Rights Trust says that for the most part, political parties lose nothing by neglecting tribal people.

“It is easy to make them a scapegoat,” she said. “They are a double minority because they are poor and tribal. They don’t have power and money to fight land grabbers who are often backed by political parties.”

More than a century ago European missionairies purchased huge amounts of land for each parish they set up in Dinajpur and neighboring Rajshahi. This makes the Church a target of land grabbers as well.

Sonatan Das, a junior lawyer and secretary of the Land Commission in Dinajpur diocese, says there are currently 52 court cases regarding land disputes between the Church and Muslims in Dinajpur.

Initially, the local government and administration show sympathy to tribal people when they face violence, but the situation changes when attackers wield their political and financial influence.

Outdated land records and discriminatory legal system

In 1950, the government fixed the ceiling for individual land ownership at 13.48 hectares. In 1984, a Land Reform Act reduced the ceiling to 8.1 hectares in an effort to carry out agrarian reform and divide the country’s land more evenly.

But the country’s elites never followed the rule and never returned excess land to the state. Moreover, there has never been a ceiling system for urban areas.

“Rich people can own 20 apartments or 20 multi-storied complexes in a city like Dhaka, and there is no law to restrict them,” said Huda.

About 1.3 million hectares of government owned lands are currently held by influential elites, according to the Land Ministry.  

Bangladesh’s land records registration system is still paper-based and outdated; it makes corruption and forgery easy. Often, landowners find that their property has been sold to others without their knowledge and they are forced to go to court to get the land back.

Cases linger for years and families are often forced to spend huge sums to recover property. Often this requires selling other property, ultimately leaving them landless.

In 2000 the government passed a legal aid act to help poor people in legal cases, but beneficiaries are very few. “Less than five percent of people get this sort of legal aid,” said Huda. “In most cases, they often hesitate to go to court, fearing further troubles.”

While Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith recently said the land records system is being computerized and modernized, activists are skeptical about real progress.

“Updating the land records system won’t in itself change anything,” said Huda. “The whole system should be changed, including the law and trial system.

“The land law must be changed to make it eligible to favor rich and poor equally. There should be land tribunals in each district of the country and also in the Supreme Court. The land cases should be resolved quickly and no case should take more than two to three years,” said Huda.

“Once it is done, 75 percent of the court cases will be gone within 10 or 15 years. But this will require lots of effort from the government, and they must do it for good.”

END

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More than 100 feared dead in Bangladesh ferry accident

Relatives mourn a victim of ferry accident in Bangladesh (Photo: Shahadat Hossain)

At least 125 people were missing and presumed dead Tuesday after an overloaded ferry with more than 200 passengers capsized on Monday while crossing a river in central Bangladesh.

The ferry MV Pinak-6 sank in the Padma River in Munshiganj district, about 44 kms from Dhaka.

Rescuers managed to save about 100 people following the sinking in rough waters and strong currents.

Only two bodies were recovered as of Tuesday morning.

Local media reported the ferry was carrying 250 passengers but officials at Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) could not confirm the figure as ferry operators in Bangladesh rarely keep passenger lists.

“The ferry was allowed 85 people but was carrying at least three times that number,” said Abdus Salam, administrative director at Fire Service and Civil Defense department.

“It tilted over and sank as it reached middle of the river when strong currents hit and panicking people started moving from one side to the other,” he said.

Rescuers failed to locate the position of the sunken ferry until Tuesday morning due to bad weather.

Thousands of anxious relatives gathered on the riverbank soon after the accident. Aminul Islam, 32 said his elder brother Hafizul and his family were on the doomed ferry.

Bangladesh police make arrest in killing of tribal villager

Tribal villagers carry the body of a fellow villager allegedly murdered by Muslims over a land dispute in northern Bangladesh (Photo: Antuni David)

Police in the Dinajpur district of northern Bangladesh arrested one person after a tribal Santal farmer was beaten to death by Muslim men on Saturday, allegedly over a long-running land dispute.

Dhudu Soren, 52, the father of four, died in a hospital in neighboring Rangpur district on Saturday after being beaten and stabbed by a group of Muslims, allegedly led by Abdul Goffar, while on his way to a local market in Khalippur village.

Over four decades Goffar’s family has been in dispute over 2.74 acres of land owned by Dhudu’s family. A legal battle in the court is ongoing.

Dhudu’s family members allege that in 1971 Dhudu’s father Fagu Soren and in 2011 his brother Gosai Soren were victims of secret killings by Goffar’s men.

“A case was filed against eight people by Dhudu’s son Robi on Sunday and we arrested Goffar’s wife. The other accused, including prime suspect Goffar, have fled the area and we are trying to locate and arrest them too,” said Mohammad Amirul Islam, of Nwabganj police station in Dinajpur.

Islam said they found serious injuries to the hands and legs of Dhudu before his body was sent for a post mortem. “The culprits used bamboo sticks and a knife to attack him. We have seized the weapons.”

Hunger strikers at Dhaka garment factory fall sick

Garment workers in a factory at Bangladesh's capital Dhaka fall sick after days of hunger strike over unpaid wages. (Photo: Kollol Mustafa)

At least 40 garment workers in a mass hunger strike in Dhaka have fallen sick as a tense standoff with factory managers entered a fourth day on Thursday with no sign of resolution.

Some of the 1,500 workers, mostly women, began to flag after they began striking on Monday at the start of Eid, the festival ending the month-long Ramadan fast.

Some were placed on saline drips but continued to refuse food or to leave the cramped office of their employer, the Tuba Group, after it failed to pay three months of wages and an Eid bonus.

“I am so sad and frustrated because the management has ruined our Eid and forced us to hunger strike. We won’t give up until our demands are met,” said Rabeya Akter, 35, a sewing machine operator.

Workers in the factory are typically paid between 10,000 taka and 12,000 taka (US$130 - $156) per month including overtime, among the lowest garment wages in the world, but have not been paid since the end of April.

Thousands rally in Bangladesh against attack on nuns

Catholic nuns join a protest rally in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka over recent attack on Catholic nuns in the country. (Photo: Rock Ronald Rozario)

Thousands of Christians protested across Bangladesh on Monday following an attack on nuns in the north of the country earlier this month.

About 2,500 Christians were joined by Muslim and Hindu groups in Rangpur, where the attack took place.  At least 50 men armed with knives and iron bars assaulted and injured two nuns on July 8.

“No way can we accept this heinous attack on these dedicated people,” Father Anthony Sen, secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission in the Catholic diocese of Dinajpur which covers Rangpur, said at the protest. "The culprits must be brought to book immediately and prosecuted in a fast-track court. The government must ensure that this kind of incident never takes place again and that the security of minorities should be guaranteed.”

There were also smaller rallies in other cities across the country including the capital Dhaka, where nuns held hands and lined major roads.

Rohingya banned from marrying Bangladesh nationals

A Rohingya refugee mother with her child in Cox's Bazar of Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s government has banned marriage between Bangladesh nationals and Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, alleging that the latter are attempting to use marriage to gain citizenship.

“We have ordered marriage registrars not to officiate any union between Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingyas and also not to enlist marriage between Rohingyas themselves,” Anisul Haque, Minister of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs told reporters in Dhaka. “We have already published a circular regarding the matter.”

The move comes after the issue was raised during this week’s annual meeting of deputy commissioners and top government officials in 64 districts of the country.

“We have received complaints that Rohingyas wed Bangladeshis and try to use the marriage certificate to gain Bangladeshi passports and other documents,” the minister added.

Haque warned that if any registrar violates the order they would face up to two years in jail.

In an interview with BBC Bangla Service, Haque defended the move when asked whether a government can dictate to whom one can marry.

“This doesn’t mean we are trying to control people’s freedom of marriage. Our intention is to comply with the official marriage registration system and we have clarified that marriage of illegal immigrants including Rohingyas doesn’t fall into that jurisdiction,” he said.

“Rohingyas have no legal status in Bangladesh as of now so they can’t be entitled to the legal option of marriage,” Haque added.

Bangladesh impunity gives minorities little chance of justice

A man walks past the burned-out home of a Hindu family in this file photo (Photo by Antuni David)

It hurts every time I hear about violence against minorities, be it last week’s attack on Hindus by Muslims in the Comilla district, or persecution of Muslims by radical Buddhists in Myanmar.

Perpetrators no doubt have their own compelling reasons to pound on small and powerless groups of people – land disputes, religious bigotry, political conspiracy, ethnic conflicts or blasphemy – but nothing can justify violence as a tool for settling problems. The issue is doubly shameful for a multi-religious nation like Bangladesh with a long history of secular culture.

In most parts of Bangladesh, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists mix easily. While Muslims account for 90 percent of the population, most follow a moderate form of Islam that allows all religions to come together to celebrate religious and national festivals. A sense of interfaith harmony is woven into the social fabric.

But, this is not the whole picture. For decades, many Hindus have struggled for survival amid attacks and pogroms by Islamic fundamentalist groups, political parties and governments. Police and the judiciary have often responded with apathy, thereby emboldening the perpetrators.

The severity of the situation can be seen in the statistics. Major attacks on Hindus, who from partition in 1947 onwards were depicted as enemies of the state, peaked in the 1971 liberation war, when some 70 percent of the three million people killed were Hindu. Numbers reduced dramatically: in 1947, Hindus accounted for 30 percent of the country’s 42 million people, but today they account for only 9 percent of an estimated 160 million.

Their broad support for the Awami League government has only added to perceptions among Islamists that they were enemies of the dominant religion. In 2001, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its Islamist ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami Party took over from the Awami League and launched a series of offensives against Hindus. Pledges by the Awami League, on its return to power in 2009, to bring the perpetrators of the killings to justice have never been fulfilled.

The shrinking of Bangladesh’s Hindu population has much to do with the exodus of entire communities. “Minorities never want to leave the country, but they have been forced to leave,” said Rana Dasgupta, a Hindu lawyer and secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council.

They are not the only minority to suffer, however. Christian churches were vandalized in 1998, and in 2001 an Islamic militant group bombed a Catholic church in the Gopalgonj district during Sunday mass, killing 10. The mastermind of the attack was detained and interrogated but not prosecuted.

Buddhists too have been hit by attacks. In September 2012, a Muslim mob angered by an apparently blasphemous Facebook image allegedly posted by a Buddhist man destroyed about 100 Buddhist homes and 30 temples in the Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar districts. Police detained 250 people but again no prosecutions were made.

Violence against Bangladesh minorities continues unabated, largely because of a culture of impunity against attackers and the failure of legal mechanisms to deliver justice to victims. Tribal groups have been forced to leave the country en masse as the perennial victims of land grabs and violence, with no recourse to compensation. Elements of the government apathetic towards minority rights give their tacit support, and this seeps into the courtroom, where justice is rarely delivered.

Minority leaders are growing more vocal about rights, and campaign for special provisions to protect their communities. They have called on the government to formulate a law to protect minorities from future violence, to create 60 reserved seats in parliament and to transfer cases of violence against minorities to a fast-track court that can resolve them quickly.

It’s time to take these into consideration. The rights of minorities need protecting, and the culture of impunity that allows their tormenters to walk free must end. Failure to do so would be a national disgrace – after all, a nation’s excellence depends on how well it treats its most vulnerable members.

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Bangladesh Church must speak out on long running anti-Christian campaign

The Catholic church in Bandarban, southeastern Chittagong Hill Tracts is at the center of an anti-Christian campaign (Photo: Chittagong Catholic Diocese website)

Silence is often prudent but at other times it’s plain foolish, as is the case with the Catholic Church and Christians in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), where their deathly silence in response to a long-running anti-Christian campaign is working against them.

In March and April, local newspapers and online media ran a cooked-up story against priests and religious brothers from the Queen of Fatima Catholic Church in Bandarban, the largest and one of the oldest Catholic churches in the CHT.

The report alleged that the priests and religious were sexually abusing tribal girls residing in a Church-run hostel.

To escape the abuses, some 71 girls fled the hostel one night, prompting Church leaders to pay off local officials to cover everything up, it claimed.

The girls actually fled in protest against the woman in charge of the hostel, a tribal woman who the girls say treated them badly. They absconded after several pleas to have the woman replaced fell on deaf ears. The girls later returned after the woman was dismissed.

The concocted abuse story came from local journalists looking to extort money from Church officials and was encouraged by local Muslim leaders who have a history of anti-Christian sentiment.

This is not an isolated case, but part of a game that’s been played against the Church and Christians for nearly a decade. During this time, several Islamist and mainstream newspapers have run fabricated reports accusing Christian missioners of converting thousands of tribals with the lure of money and plotting to turn the CHT into an independent Christian country like Timor-Leste.

The reports also alleged that several Western countries were funding Christian NGO activities to change the religious demography of the CHT to fulfill this agenda.

Church leaders and development activists have told me privately that government intelligence agents have paid them visits asking them how many Christians were in the area and how Christian NGOs were being funded.

Last year, the Hefazat-e-Islam militant group staged two rallies in Dhaka to make 13 demands. Most Christians failed to notice that one of them was a crackdown on “unlawful activities by Christian missioners and NGOs in the CHT”.

Throughout this time, Church leaders have remained silent. They have neither spoken to the authorities nor refuted the baseless claims in the mainstream press. They also didn’t opt for official complaints and protests, not even with regard to the Hefazat-e-Islam rallies.

The CHT, which borders India and Myanmar, is the only mountainous region of Bangladesh. This strategically important area is home to more than 12 indigenous tribes, mostly Buddhist, who have lived there for centuries and been socially and economically neglected for decades.

These peace loving people have seen the systematic destruction of their culture and livelihood since the 1970s when the government started changing the local demography by resettling landless Bengali Muslims who started grabbing tribal lands. The result has been ongoing sectarian conflict in these hills.

Tribals resisted the influx and, with latent support from India, formed a militia group to fight the settlers.

In response, the government turned the area into a military zone. For more than two decades, a bloody bush war between the army and militants claimed hundreds of lives until it ended with the CHT Peace Accord in 1997, which is still to be implemented. To this day, the region is heavily militarized with some 500 army camps.

Christian missioners arrived in the 1950s, and today Christians account for less than three percent of the region’s 1.6 million people.

The Muslim population, however, has increased from less than three percent in 1947 to more than 48 percent today. Tribals are still larger in number, but they are marginal in city centers and most businesses are controlled by Bengalis.

With such a small Christian presence, claims that missioners and NGO’s are trying to create another Timor-Leste are nothing more than ill intentioned fairy tales and simply not possible .

Yet, the rumors are rife and are being fed by local Bengali Muslim groups, who are aggressively anti-tribal.

They are the force behind the occupation of tribal lands by Muslim settlers. They are also backed by civil and military officials, and Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hefazat. All are trying to discredit the Church to divert national and international attention away from the grim political and rights situation for tribals in the CHT.

The war is over, but sectarian clashes between tribals and Muslims and rival tribal groups are still common.

According to a local rights group, Muslims killed 11 tribal men, raped 15 tribal women and burned down more than 100 tribal homes last year. Rights activists also accuse the government and army of keeping unrest alive to legitimize the militarization of the area.

International rights groups including Amnesty International have reported gross human rights violations by Muslim settlers and soldiers on tribal people. These include murder, torture, arson and rape.

Environmental groups allege the region is facing an environmental disaster because of deforestation and tobacco cultivation by the settlers.

Foreigners are generally not allowed in the CHT; but if they are it is usually under close surveillance. It is not because armed tribal groups might kidnap them for ransom, but mostly to stop them seeing what really goes on there.

Like in other parts of the country, Catholics and Protestants have set up dozens of schools, vocational centers, health clinics, and conducted development activities in the CHT to help tribals, non-tribals, Christians and non-Christians alike.

In most other places, Christians are held in high esteem by Muslims for their contributions in the education, health and development sectors, but in the CHT they are being vilified.

One reason is the activities of Christian missioners who have made tribal people more aware of their rights and more vocal.

The Bandarban Church incident is the most recent example of this vilification and could have been a lot worse if local Muslims had believed the stories that were told.

A 1998 mob attack by Muslims on several churches and Christian institutions in the Luxmibazar district of Dhaka during a land dispute between a Catholic school and a local mosque should serve as a gentle reminder as to how vulnerable Christians are.

Church leaders should realize that Christian haters consider their silence as weakness. They should learn from the recent attempt to stoke anti-Christian feelings in the CHT and act strongly and accordingly.

If they don’t take this seriously, they can be assured that the worst is yet to come.

END 

Read original opinion piece here Bangladesh Church must speak out on long running anti-Christian campaign

Remembering Rana Plaza, one year on

The Rana Plaza tragedy sparked strong public outcry and calls to improve factory safety and conditions for Bangladesh’s garment workers. (Photo by Stephan Uttom)

It’s been a year since the Rana Plaza textile complex collapsed, killing 1,135 workers and injuring more than 2,500, making it the worst industrial disaster in Bangladesh history.

Fatal accidents are all too common in Bangladesh’s US$20 billion garment industry, the second largest in the world after China's. In the past decade accidents have occurred an average of two to four times per month. It’s ironic—and outrageous—for an industry that employs four million people and fetches 80 percent of country’s annual export income to be so poorly regulated.

About 2,000 workers have been killed in work-related accidents in Bangladesh in the past ten years. These accidents, and the easily preventable deaths that occurred as a result, have largely been due to lax safety standards and atrocious working conditions in the factories. Disasters like the Rana Plaza collapse and the Tazreen Fashions factory fire, which killed more than 100 people in Dhaka in 2012, are a product of the collective negligence of everyone who has benefited from the Bangladesh garment industry. They have occurred under the noses of the authorities, trade bodies and Western buyers, who remained astonishingly silent as workers perished. The catalysts for these events did not just appear over night. Year after year, a wide range of monitoring bodies and agencies put their stamps of approval on thousands of factories, despite the fact that structures lacked proper fire doors, fire escapes, smoke-proof stairways and automatic sprinkler systems.

Some analysts have drawn parallels between the Rana Plaza accident and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York that killed 146 workers and led to lasting safety reforms in the US garment industry. Well, seven times as many individuals died at Rana Plaza. The scale of suffering in the wake of the collapse was almost too much to swallow, even for the most apathetic of companies or governments. It triggered an unprecedented outcry from the media, labor advocates and consumer groups, which is paving the way for long overdue reforms in Bangladesh’s garment industry.

Indeed, a year after the collapse, Bangladesh has seen a major push for changes.

More than 150 mostly European companies have signed the legally binding Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, while 26 mostly North American companies including Walmart, Gap and Target have formed the separate Bangladesh Alliance for Worker Safety that commits the companies to invest in upgrades in more than 2,000 factories. The Bangladesh government and the International Labor Organization have pledged to conduct safety inspections in the remaining factories.

Under intense pressure from foreign governments—including suspension of US trade privileges for Bangladesh—the government has amended its labor law to make it easier for workers to unionize. To date, more than 100 new trade unions have been registered and workers are speaking out strongly against poor working conditions and walking away from jobs if necessary. Their collective efforts have led to an increase in the minimum wage from $37 to $68 per month.

The owners and managers of Tazreen Fashions and Rana Plaza are being prosecuted for culpable homicide charges in a country where garment manufacturers wield immense political power and have never been held accountable for previous accidents.

These are all positive changes, despite the fact that they have only come about as a result of such a massive loss of lives. But, we would be foolish to believe that everything has been cleaned up and will henceforth be on the straight and narrow.

Though Western brands have begun a major push for safety improvements, they have divided into two oft-feuding groups—those that signed the Accord and those that signed the Alliance—which is an arrangement that analysts say hinders the overall effort.

Members of the Alliance claim that they have so far performed more factory inspections than the Accord brands, while Accord members say that the Alliance’s inspections are far less rigorous. Accord members also say they work closely with trade unions and have input from workers, while Alliance members assert that some Accord brands have not provided wages to workers who were laid off after their factories were temporarily closed following inspections that discovered serious safety violations.

The Alliance has been widely criticized for not being legally binding and for its lack of transparency. The Alliance claims to have inspected about 400 factories so far, but it does not make its inspection reports public. Meanwhile, the Accord has published reports on 10 factories and asserts that it has inspected about 300.

In a sense, the competition appears positive on the grounds that they are attempting to raise the bar higher in terms of safety standards. But at times it also seems like an unappetizing neo-colonial battle in the globalized world.

The Accord inspection reports paint an ominous picture of dangerous conditions in the factories. Inspectors found structural, safety and fire faults in every factory they visited including dangerously heavy amounts of storage, which has led to cracked walls and stressed, sagging support beams. They also found basic fire equipment missing and exit routes that didn’t lead to the outside. Viyellatex, considered one of the best factories in Bangladesh, received multiple citations.

If massive, top-of-the-line factories have such issues, one can only imagine how bad the reality could be in smaller factories. In Bangladesh, there is a vast underworld of small factories operated by subcontractors working for larger manufacturers. These businesses often operate in shoddy apartments, basements, shops and rooftops where underpaid workers sew clothes under fierce pressure from bosses who abuse them and care little for workplace safety.

Unauthorized subcontracting is common. International buyers often know about it, though they don’t admit such things officially. The reality is they can’t stop it.

Flaws of the labor law 

At its core, the labor law is not that worker friendly. Theoretically, workers are free to form trade unions, but in practice it’s not that easy. In a country where corruption is widespread, officials can be discreetly paid off to prevent the formation of a union. Likewise, factory owners can obtain a list of prospective union members from corrupt officials and fire the workers who intended to unionize. If workers take their case to the labor court, justice is rarely the outcome. Most garment workers are too poor to afford protracted unemployment, and the legal system is too expensive and too drawn out for them to stick out their case.

The labor law guarantees $1,282 in compensation from a factory owner if a worker dies or is seriously injured in a workplace accident. But is this money worth a person’s life? For years, the labor law has remained friendlier to owners than to workers, largely because owners wield immense political power. Some have even become parliamentarians or government ministers.

Meanwhile, the government has reportedly raised $16 million in compensation for the victims of Rana Plaza, while the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association has raised some $1.8 million. However, some victims’ families say they have received nothing, and not a single family has received the full amount of $1,250 in cash and $19,000 in a savings scheme the government promised.

There is a serious lack of coordination among authorities and various organizations working to help victims and families. No one seems to know when the compensation payments will be made.

“It seems everyone is considering it as an act of charity, not as an act of responsibility,” a labor export said recently.

Rana Plaza could go down in history as a big turning point for the Bangladesh garment manufacturing industry. Like the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York, it might be the wake-up call that international brands and factory owners need.

But if it’s not, and better safety standards aren’t enforced, there’s no telling how many more Rana Plazas there could be.

Read the original opinion piece here Remembering Rana Plaza, one year on

Killing innocents is no mark of a great nation

India's border guards have killed hundreds of people along Indo-Bangla border in the past decades

All living things will die some day. In fact, every day about 150,000 people die around the world because of illness, accident and, increasingly, from war, acts of terror and ethnic or religious conflicts.

In Bangladesh, a growing number have died in the last decade for the most trivial of reasons – gunned down by Indian border guards for allegedly trespassing on Indian territory along a 4,100 km border

About 1,000 people have been killed in the last 10 years at the hands of India’s Border Security Force (BSF). Most have been unarmed Bangladeshi villagers as India maintains a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy.

India and Bangladesh share a common history, and Bangladesh is India’s largest trade partner. The popular culture of India has been enthusiastically embraced across the border. And yet, border guards shoot first and ask questions later.

Ironic, then, that Indian media has claimed that Bangladesh was found to be the most trusted nation in a recent online survey, with Russia a close second. 

If this is the case, then why does the BSF kill so many people along the Bangladesh border? Or to put it another way, if the survey truly reflects the mindset of Indian citizens about Bangladesh, then is there not a disconnect among India’s politicians and government officials?

India has every right to prevent illegal immigration, smuggling and anti-government militant activities, but that right does not extend to the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents. There is no justification for a shoot first policy.

The killings went largely unabated and with no formal investigations or punishment – despite high-level talks between the two countries and promises to end the policy – until the death of a teenage Bangladeshi girl more than two years ago.

Felani Khatun, 15, was returning home from a visit to India with her father on January 7, 2011. Neither had travel documents, so they opted to use a bamboo ladder to scale the barbed wire fence installed by the BSF to protect the border.

Felani’s father made it safely across the fence, but his young daughter’s clothes got snagged on the fence and a BSF guard shot her dead.

Her lifeless body hung on the fence for hours, later becoming a symbol for Bangladeshis of the ongoing injustice of the border policy. It prompted an unprecedented global outcry.

In the years that followed, the number of such killings dropped while diplomatic and international pressure increased. And last month, after massive criticism at home and abroad, a trial was started to prosecute the border guard who killed Felani.

Bangladeshis had high hopes for justice, at least in one case among hundreds of others, from the world’s largest democracy. But their hopes were short lived.

A special court in West Bengal last Friday acquitted Amiya Ghosh, the man who killed Felani Khatun.

Outraged Bangladeshis believed that the trial held symbolic value and that if justice was done, then BSF guards would think carefully before they fired on unarmed civilians along the border.

India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh has said the verdict is not final, but few have any faith that Felani’s killer will ever be brought to justice.

As a much larger, more prosperous neighbor, India must behave more responsibly with its smaller and less powerful neighbors. Moreover, it should set an example in the way it delivers justice, and its future as a superpower is not only contingent upon resolving its disputes with arch-rival Pakistan, but on its relations with all of its neighbors.

It’s worth remembering what Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote: “No man ever got very high by pulling other people down.”

Third World View is the pseudonym for a Bangladeshi journalist based in Dhaka

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