Kolkata: These days, when anybody asks Azam Khan where he is, the exiled Bangladeshi blogger says he is in a country where the mighty Alps can be seen. “I get death threats daily. And fundamentalists of Bangladeshi origin are all over Europe trying to hunt me down. So, I do not give out my exact location,” Khan, 35, told ThePrint in a telephonic interview.
Khan, a sustainable finance associate at a private firm, regularly posts updates on social media about what he describes as “Bangladesh’s descent into anarchy”.
“I did not need to put myself in more danger than I was already in. Europe gave me new friends, new foods, weekends at the bar, and, better still, hiking trips to the mountains. I could have lived with that,” Khan said.
But, he has not been able to fully pull away from what’s going on in Bangladesh. On social media, Khan regularly shares what he thinks has been going wrong ever since Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took the reins of the country after former prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India on 5 August following nationwide protests against her government.
Khan, who has chosen to remain single given the threat to his life, says it was Hasina who had emboldened Islamic fundamentalists to attack free voices, like his.
“Between 2013 and 2016, some of my fellow bloggers were killed in Bangladesh for speaking up against radicalism during Hasina’s time. She failed to act against them decisively. I managed to flee in 2017. But if it was bad under Hasina, it is worse under Yunus. The interim government is simply abetting the spread of fundamentalism across Bangladesh,” he said.
Khan was in his early 20s when the killings of bloggers who spoke for a more inclusive, democratic, and anti-radical Bangladesh began in February 2013. They had emerged as voices of dissent from the Shahbag movement that started on 5 February 2013 when Bangladesh’s youth hit the streets demanding the death sentence for 12 alleged war criminals of the 1971 liberation war.
Some of these bloggers were atheists, some from the minority Hindu community, others Muslims who didn’t want their faith to be hijacked by radicals, but all of them wanted a more inclusive Bangladesh. Radical forces started targeting and killing them.
“Ahmed Rajib Haider was the first blogger on the list. He was my closest friend. On 15 February 2013, he was hacked to death by members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant outfit,” Khan said.
Khan managed to escape. He said Hasina’s fatal flaw was trying to keep fundamentalism in check but never taking enough action to crush it completely, enjoying undisputed power.
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‘Not just Hindus, Bangladesh is bleeding’
Khan’s latest Facebook post reads: “A 13-year-old schoolboy, Hridoy Paul, who happened to be a Hindu, was arrested and beaten by the Bangladesh Army openly for insulting Islam, for so-called blasphemy.” He also shared a video of the incident.
While, Khan says, the attacks on Hindus have caught global attention, the larger damage to society that the fall of Hasina has brought about is not being talked about enough.
In another Facebook post, Khan claimed that the killings of policemen during the quota protest movement that eventually led to the ouster of Hasina were planned and not a reaction to police brutality. With the post, Khan shared a clip from a television interview with Hasib Al Islam, one of the coordinators of the anti-discrimination student movement.
“If we were to follow the law, these revolutions would not have happened. If the fire had not been set in the metro rail, if police officers had not been killed, then this revolution would not have been achieved so easily,” Islam told Dhaka Tribune.
According to Khan, what appeared to be a genuine students’ protest was infiltrated by fundamentalist forces like the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh from the very beginning. When Hasina’s government fell, he said, it was not the end of fascism as advertised to the world.
“5 August marked the beginning of a new chapter in Bangladesh’s shift away from democracy and liberal values. As a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Yunus is a figurehead the Western world cheers. He says the right things and talks about a more inclusive Bangladesh. But underneath, all radical forces have become emboldened and with each passing day, Bangladesh is moving towards an Islamic society,” he said.
Among the many developments that point towards this shift, three stand out to Khan. The first is the release of Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani, chief of the Ansarullah Bangla Team. Rahmani was convicted in Rajib Haider’s murder case.
His release has put Indian security agencies on high alert since terrorists linked to the Ansarullah Bangla Team have been arrested in India in the past. Two terrorists, Bahar Mia and Rarely Mia, were arrested at Guwahati railway station by the Assam Police in May.
“This is not a stray incident. Only recently, Islamists put up a banner of a terror outfit at the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute. When the principal protested, he was forced to step down. There were processions with ISIS flags on Dhaka streets. This was unimaginable before 5 August,” Khan alleged.
The stifling of the press is the second development that signifies Bangladesh’s radical shift, according to Khan.
“The Department of Information has revoked the press accreditation cards of 20 journalists and officials for their affiliation with the Awami League. It is standard practice for political journalists to cover political parties. If there is a specific charge of malpractice such measures are understandable. Why cancel accreditation for covering a political party in the past?” Khan said.
He said even veteran journalists like Shyamal Dutta, the former general secretary of the National Press Club, and Mozammel Haque Babu, Chief Executive Officer of Ekattor TV, who are seen to be critical of the current government have been hounded or detained.
For Khan, the third and perhaps the most worrying change in Bangladesh is the attempt to rewrite history. Soon after Hasina fled, the statues of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of the nation, were desecrated and pulled down. While that was the handiwork of the mob, for its part, the interim government has gone ahead and announced the cancellation of eight national observances, including 15 August, Rahman’s death anniversary, also marked as National Mourning Day.
“It is one thing to be anti-Hasina, quite another to deny Mujib’s contribution to the creation of Bangladesh. A concerted attempt is being made to take Bangladesh back to its East Pakistan days and tone down the legacy of the 1971 War of Independence. If that happens, it would be the death of Bangladesh as we know it,” he said.
‘Yunus is in no hurry to leave’
A Dhaka-based political journalist, who requested anonymity given the targeting of the press in the past two months, said voices like Azam Khan’s are becoming increasingly rare in Bangladesh. “He would not have been able to post what he is doing right now if he was in Bangladesh. The current regime was supposed to make things better in the country. But it is averse to any kind of criticism,” he said.
For Khan, what is of utmost importance right now is for Bangladesh to decide its fate through a fair and fair election. “Yunus was not elected to power. The job of the interim government was to settle things down after the tumultuous period following Hasina’s hasty exit and prepare the ground for the next national election. It seems to be in no mood to do the same,” he said.
On Wednesday, secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition party, called upon the Yunus government to shift its focus from other issues to holding a “participatory and credible national election”.
“I want to say to Dr Muhammad Yunus that you are highly respected worldwide, and the people of Bangladesh deeply love and respect you. They want that to continue. My request is that you stay vigilant to ensure your position is not undermined,” the Daily Star quoted Alamgir as saying at a discussion.
Azam Khan said whether Yunus does that or sticks on to power indefinitely will determine Bangladesh’s fate. “If he does the latter, I won’t be able to return home. For now, the fundamentalists are out on the streets, targeting not just minority Hindus and Awami League leaders, but free voices like mine. If I return, I will meet the same fate as my late friend Ahmed Rajib Haider,” the blogger said.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)