Dhaka Tribune, 9 August 2013
Who is William Gomes?
Probir K Sarker
The “activist” demands trial of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman “for war crimes” and terms Ghulam Azam “an agent of peace"
Sometimes he identifies himself as a freelance journalist, sometimes a correspondent of unheard global media and writes unsubstantiated “news” on blogs. He claims to be a human rights activist who fled Bangladesh in the face of torture and intimidation.
He is William Nicholas Gomes, whose existence is only felt online. He is very active in almost all the social media platforms in use. Recently, he hit the headlines after threatening prime minister’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy on Twitter that Sheikh Hasina would have to face the same consequence like his grandfather Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who was assasinated on August 15, 1975.
In a tweet, the “activist” also demands trial of Sheikh Mujib “for war crimes” and terms former Jamaat ameer Ghulam Azam “an agent of peace.”
Twenty-eight year old Gomes in his Facebook page also termed Ghulam Azam, the mastermind of collaborators in 1971, a true leader. His writings aim at activities of different government agencies, especially the security forces, and corruption allegations.
Joy reported the issue on his Facebook account and official fan page on August 4 and uploaded a screenshot of the tweet which @Wnicholasgomes (William Nicholas Gomes) sent, and termed the "self-proclaimed human rights activist" a "real terrorist."
The tweet posted at 7:22pm on August 3 says: “Ask your Mom to pack up. Its’ time to go. For now on she will cook for you everyday. Wish she will end up like your nanu.”
Seventy-four followers of Gomes retweeted it while 47 favoured. Moreover, some people protested the tweet mentioning Gomes while some others praised him for the “brave personality.”
Till August 5 Gomes continued mentioning Joy in several other tweets he posted on Bangabandhu’s family and the current Awami League-led government.
The second one – posted at 1:57pm on August 4 – reads: “Time is coming when Bangladesh will judge D dictators Sheikh Mujibur and Hasina. Family rule will come to an end.”
Next day he posted: “Not Ghulam Azam but Sheikh Mujib should be tried for war crimes. He had initiat-ed the war with others. Azam is an agent of peace.”
Joy made the “threat” issue public through a tweet at 6:30pm on August 5: “Self proclaimed human rights activist William Gomes threatens Bangladesh PM and her family with death.”
Gomes replied the tweet at 8:49pm on August 5: “Strange! You felt threaten by tweet? But you mom killed innocent Hefazot-e-Islam peoples. How their family felt? That was bullets.”
Then he stopped. But his personal Facebook account is still active where he did not repost the tweets on Joy.
The prime minister’s son publicised the threatening tweet in his Facebook account on August 5: “A tweet that was sent directly to me by William Gomes. He claims to be a human rights activist and has been very active spreading false claims of human rights abuses by our Government...He is really a terrorist.”
The next day, the prime minister ordered probe into the matter. No update on the issue was known till yesterday.
One man, many faces
Apart from retweeting global issues, Gomes has recently reacted over the cancellation of Jamaat’s party registration, conviction of former Jamaat ameer Ghulam Azam and police action on Hefazat-e-Islam.
He had retweeted posts made regularly by some pro-Jamaat IDs, like Basherkella – a Facebook page that propagates and instigates attack on the state to stop the trail. He also follows and retweets Chhatra Shibir account.
According to his twitter information, Gomes is a human rights activist and freelance journalist. He also claims himself to an “Interfaith Activist and Fair Trade Activist.” His Facebook page says: “William Nicholas Gomes, a Bangladeshi journalist, human rights activist and author was born on December 25, 1985 in Dhaka.”
The cover photo of his Facebook profile page shows Ghulam Azam waving hand. He also posted a 1975 photograph of Sheikh Mujib on which the text says: “Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the fascist ruler.... I demand bring the killer, fascist Mujib under law immediately.” There he also gave his mobile number (+8801974440666) and email ID (william@williamgomes.org).
The profile shows he is currently involved with Oregon-based online newspaper salem-news.com as an assistant editor. This newspaper highlights him as: “William Gomes: eye on the world. He’s serious about human rights violations.”
Last year, he was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York. Back in 2009, he completed a diploma from Dhaka International University. According to the infor-mation on openDemocracy, a global blog site, he has worked for the Asian Human Rights Commission.
As per his LinkedIn profile, Gomes had been the Bangladesh correspondent at Srilanka Guardian between January 2010 and May last year. His Facebook page says he worked for Italian news agency asianews.it from year 2009 to 2011. On that time, Gomes claimed that he was accredited as a free-lance journalist by the Press Information Department of Bangladesh.
Apart from openDemocracy, Gomes writes in Huffington Post blog. He used to write in bdnews24blog, mynews.in and Muktomona. He also has a personal website that contains his works “williamnicholasgomes.com.” Gomes founded Christian Development Alternative (CDA) in 2007 and had been its execu-tive director till 2009.
His Facebook page elaborates on his area of work at national level which includes rights of minority Christians. In 2007, he had introduced himself as a filmmaker in 2007 with short film Rohosya (Mystery) regarding the conflicts and problems of marriage of persons from inter-religious backgrounds, Muslim and Christian in particular, in Bangladesh’s context. Two of his films are titled ‘Murder in the name of Allah’ and Ojona Gontobbo [Unknown Destination] regarding the contemporary manipulation and discrimination of the religious minority communities in Bangladesh.” He claims that on his return from India after screening of the movies, he was “called by several intelligence agencies of Bangladesh in their offices.”
He claimed that due to his conversion to Christianity from Islam, he was under continuous threats from different social and religious groups.
He also investigated the “extrajudicial killings by Rab” and claims that he was an active campaigner for demanding that Rab be disband for its “involvement in torture, extra judicial killings and forced disap-pearances of persons.”
When UK attorney Toby Cadman, who was Jamaat’s legal counsel for the tribunal’s cases, had been denied by the Bangladeshi authorities at the airport, he wrote to the prime minster urging her to en-sure credibility of the process of the trial by fulfilling the norms of fair trial.
- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/politics/2013/aug/09/who-william-gomes#sthash.Gnz6VAMf.dpuf
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