Last week, 25-year-old Ananya Azad received a Facebook message that said, “You would be the next person. So be careful.”
Since February, three prominent secular bloggers have been brutally murdered in Bangladesh, so Azad takes the threat seriously. He continues to write of religious intolerance and Islamist extremism but only for likeminded readers. He left his job as a newspaper columnist in March and now shares his thoughts on closed social media networks.
“Anyone who has a critical view about religion is exposed,” he told the Guardian. “I probably have reduced my frequency of writing but my nature of writing has not changed.”
Azad well knows the sort of vitriol unleashed on those who question matters of faith. His father, Humayun Azad, sustained serious injuries when he was attacked in 2004 by machete-wielding assailants after he wrote a satirical novel on Islamist extremism.
“There’s certainly been an uptick [in violence against bloggers],” Sumit Galhotra of the Committee to Protect Journalists told ThinkProgress, but, he added, “This is something we’ve seen a continuous build up to.”
Galhotra traces the hostilities to sweeping protests in the capital’s Shahbag Square were hundreds of thousands rallied to call for the death penalty for those who committed war crimes during the country’s bloody battle for independence from Pakistan four decades ago. Many of those indicted were prominent Islamist leaders who did not look fondly on those calling for their deaths — least of all the secular and atheist bloggers who helped organize the protests. The protesters also earned the wrath of Islamists by calling for a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political party.
One of the most prominent anti-Islamist bloggers, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was macheted to death in 2013 in an attack linked to al-Qaeda.
After that, a hit list of 84 secular and atheist writers emerged. Ananya Azad’s name is on that list.
“I do feel insecure in a country where freedom of speech is being constrained,” Azad told VICE, and added that government officials seem to want to ignore the sort of Islamist violence that nearly took his father’s life.
Although Bangladesh is officially a secular country, more than 90 percent of its population is Muslim and Islamist leaders have long pushed for Islam to play a more prominent part in public affairs.
“I think [the attacks] very much speak to the rising tension in the country to define its ideology,” Galhotra said. “A great amount of tension exists between secularists and Islamists and that’s very much coming to the fore now.”
While a South Asian al-Qaeda affiliate has claimed responsibility for the attacks on the three bloggers stabbed and machete to death in Bangladesh this year, the government has muzzled them itself.
In 2013, it imprisoned four prominent bloggers and writers and banned eight websites — a move Galhotra believes was meant to “placate Islamist ideologues.”
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has repeatedly come down against freedom of speech in favor of protecting Islam from defamatory statements — something she said she had a responsibility to do as a Muslim. Regarding the crackdown on bloggers in 2013, she said her administration would take action against those involved in “hurting people’s religious sentiments.”
Hasina also condemned the controversial film, “The Innocence of Muslim” which sparked furious protests in many Muslim majority countries when it was released on YouTube in 2012. She asked the United States to punish those responsible for creating the film, and said, “We express our strong condemnation. No Muslim can tolerate the insults. We can’t tolerate either.”
Still, Hasina has refused to cow to demands for harsher blasphemy laws which would allow for the death penalty to be imposed on those found to insult religion.
“This country is a secular democracy. So each and every religion has the right to practice their religion freely and fair. But it is not fair to hurt anybody’s religious feeling,” she told the BBC. “Always we try to protect every religious sentiment.”
But few bloggers feel confident in the government’s willingness to protect them from future attacks.
Asif Mohiuddin, who was stabbed outside of his office in 2013 and later arrested by government, now feels threatened by Islamists and the government alike.
“The picture is very clear,” he said. “The government is on their side,” he said referring to Islamist extremists.
Even if the attacks and arrests wane, the fear remains real for many writers in Bangladesh.
“[Islamist extremists] are trying to send a very strong signal to bloggers,” Sumit Galhotra of the Committee to Protect Journalists said, “not just these 84 who’ve been named on the list — but others as well to discontinue the work that they’re doing. That’s going to have a chilling effect on criticism, commentary, and journalism in the country.”