“There is no place for me in Bangladesh," says a
young woman blogger who fled the south Asian country in 2017 following a
gang rape.
It’s no longer news that non-believers and members of minority communities face random persecution by Islamists in Bangladesh.
Five years ago,
the Awami League government, which claims to be secular, introduced
draconian penalties for blasphemy by electronic publishers by amending
section 57 of the Information & Communication Technology Act.
This
amendment aimed to curb free speech and targeted bloggers and writers
who were trying to promote secular values in a civilised and peaceful
way. Atheists were brutally attacked and several were killed in
subsequent bloodbaths in 2015 and 2016.
Sexual
violence has also been used against atheist bloggers, including
22-year-old Nirala*, a young feminist of Singhalese origin. She was gang
raped in 2016, and fled Bangladesh in 2017.
Though rape of young women is widespread
in Bangladesh, it is shocking that such violence has been used to
control and punish an atheist woman blogger under a secular government
led by a female prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.
Nirala
contacted me for support, believing that my feminist ethics would
ensure a sympathetic response. She used to follow me on Twitter and we
had feminist and atheist networks in common.
She
hadn’t talked about her assault for more than a year. An undergraduate
botany student at the time, she says she was kidnapped in broad daylight
from a rickshaw on a busy road, in front of her younger sister, in her
hometown in northern Bangladesh.
“The motorbike was
going so fast that I couldn’t recognise the direction in which they were
taking me," Nirala said, in a written testimony she sent to me and
colleagues, which we translated and shared with secular and human rights
groups to help raise funds and support for her treatment abroad.
"Despite
all my cries and pleas, they forcefully undressed me and took nude
photographs to circulate later," she said. "I was then drugged, and
raped for three days. It is so traumatic that I find it hard to describe
or even to talk about it. It’s killing me."
Nirala is
Hindu by birth but she identifies as atheist. She said the rapists told
her that “it is all right for Muslims to rape a Hindu girl”. They
threatened that, if she reported the incident to the police, her younger
sister and mother would face the same violence.
“I was
told that I will be killed and thrown into the river,” said Nirala.
After the assault, her attackers left her outside her parents’ house.
“They warned my parents not to report it. They told them that I had been
taken to be interrogated about my writing."
“I was told that I will be killed and thrown into the river."
The
attack caused severe internal damage to Nirala’s body. She was
diagnosed with multiple injuries and is receiving treatment abroad, with
costs covered by humanist and feminist organisations as her family
could not afford it.
The young feminist’s “mistake” was that she dared to write against fundamentalism and stood for freedom of expression.
Nirala
rejected both Islamism and Hindutva. She co-administered a secular
community blog site which she said was shut down by the Bangladeshi
government in 2013 following an irrational demand by Islamist groups for the state to execute all atheist bloggers.
She
believes that her rapists were paid activists of the Awami League
ruling party. Known to the police, supported by local politicians, such
activists may easily get away with their crimes. Her family reported the
rape to police, but it was not followed up. Rather, she said, they were
advised to send Nirala away.
When Nirala left
Bangladesh, she said her rapists, and other Islamist goons, went after
her sister and mother. “The persecution doesn’t end. My blogging put my
whole family at risk. I can’t sleep at night even with high doses of
medication. I am always having nightmares."
The organised persecution of atheists in Bangladesh began in 2013, following the Shahbag movement
during which secular activists called for the hanging of Islamist
politicians accused of war crimes during the 1971 war of independence,
and the murder of atheist blogger Rajib Haider.
Nirala
first wrote about gender equality, women’s rights, and discrimination
against women, children and minorities in Bangladesh through Facebook,
where she encountered the Bangladeshi secular blogger community.
Her
own blogging on religious issues began when two atheist writers who she
admired were brutally killed by extremists. She was impacted by “the
brutality of persecution” they faced and began thinking more critically
about the world around her.
“Believing that equality,
free speech and human rights are the fundamentals of democracy, I
started to write blogs. I was very passionate and young. I thought that
it was a citizen’s duty to express opinions about the issues that affect
them,” she said.
Reality in Bangladesh taught her
otherwise. Her Facebook user ID was “banned twice as a result of
organised reporting and [a] campaign against my writings by the Islamic
fundamentalists,” she claims.
This is not uncommon; it
is understood that several Bangladeshi atheist bloggers and online
activists have been banned from Facebook. An online network of Islamist
campaigners are believed to systematically report Facebook posts to the
government.
“There is no place for me in Bangladesh."
Several
years ago, Nirala adopted the pen name ‘X.’ When her identity was
discovered, and she began receiving violent threats, she switched to the
pen name ‘Y.’ Yet persecution continued.
“Some Muslim
boys used to harass me," she said, on her way to a computer course.
“One day they followed me from the road... and humiliated me sexually in
the classroom right in front of my classmates.”
In recent years Islamic extremist groups have published hit lists, often circulated via social networks, of atheists and writers they vowed to kill.
To
this day, the government remains unwilling to end the prevailing
environment of impunity for the masterminds of such violence. It is
trying to appease an opposition that relentlessly plays the religion
card.
The prime minister has herself publicly criticised those who speak out against religious belief. In 2015 she told Time
magazine: “If anybody thinks they have no religion, OK, it’s their
personal view... But they have no right to write or speak against any
religion."
Nirala continues to write, using pen names,
while living outside Bangladesh. Her family, including her mother and
younger sister, are in hiding. Seeking justice, and still a believer in
equality, free speech and human rights, Nirala said: “There is no place
for me in Bangladesh.”
* Names have been changed to protect identities.
Rumana Hashem is a sociologist and a secular women’s rights
activist from Bangladesh who is opposed to prejudice of all kinds. Currently
based at the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging at University of East
London, she has a PhD in Gender and Armed Conflict.
