Are we losing Bangladesh?
ON August 21, 2004, 23 Awami League leaders and workers were brutally killed in a premeditated grenade attack in a rally on Bangabandhu Avenue addressed by the then Leader of the Opposition and Awami League, Sheikh Hasina. Needless to say the intended target was Sheikh Hasina, as12 deadly grenades were aimed at her. Luckily, she escaped the mayhem but her hearing capability was seriously damaged. After the incident, noted Indian journalist Hiranmay Karlekar wrote a thought provoking book titled 'Bangladesh: the next Afghanistan?'
Afghanistan was then being systematically ravaged by the Taliban militants. Earlier another attempt was also made on the life of Sheikh Hasina in Kotalipara, Gopalgonj. Police arrested a man named Mufti Hannan in connection with the attempt in Kotalipara and August 21 grenade attack. Hannan had close connection with HuJI. He also confessed that he was regularly in touch with Tarique Rahman, elder son of Begum Zia. After witnessing the never ending attacks by religious bigots and the petrol bomb related violence introduced in our political arena recently many have started thinking that perhaps Karlekar was right in his observation. The thinking was further reinforced when blogger Md. Oyasiqur Rahman Babu was hacked to death by three religious bigots in broad daylight in Dhaka on Tuesday. This comes barely after the brutal murder of Avijit Roy, another blogger and online activist. The same year, a very similar attempt was made on another blogger Asif Mohiuddin. Similar attempts were made to kill the eminent poet, now deceased Shamsur Rahman, and writer Dr. Humayun Azad. Although Shamsur Rahman managed to save himself, Dr. Azad succumbed to his injuries a few months later in Germany. The killers who were involved in such barbaric acts often did not have any idea what blogging is.
Religion was used for all recent killings of bloggers, though in Islam nowhere is it written or said that anyone has the right take another person's life in the name of religion. According to available reports, the three alleged killers did not know Masum, their hujur who gave them their 'assignment,' from before but met him for the first time when he shared with them the plan as to how Babu should be killed. He even showed the photograph of Babu beforehand so that the killers can identify him easily. The three did a reconnaissance on Babu's movement and he was hit near his residence in Tejgaon industrial area when he was on his way to office.
Those involved in these killings and militancy belong to fundamentalist political parties like HuJI, Ansarullah Bangla Team, JMB, Hizbut Tahrir, Hizbut Towhid, LoT, and if not all most have their roots in Jamaat-e-Islami. Another recent phenomenon that has surfaced is that not all who are involved in such brutal killings are madrasa students. Some of them, especially those belonging to Hizbut Tahrir, come from different public and private universities. Those arrested for killing Rajib were all students of a high profile private university of the country.
On October 2, 2014, there was a massive explosion in Khagragar in the district of Burdawan in West Bengal where two bomb makers with close connections with JMB were making highly dangerous and deadly Improvised Explosive Devices (IOD). A week or so ago, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India, while submitting charge sheets against 22 JMB operatives in the Bonkshal Court in Burdawan mentioned that those charge sheeted at least 4 of them were Bangladeshi citizens. Of those accused 13 were arrested and 8 are absconding. 2 died during the deadly explosion. The charge sheet mentioned that those accused were involved in a conspiracy to remove the elected government of Sheikh Hasina and replace it with `Sharia' based government. All arrested or accused had connections with madrasas in Burdawan, Nodia, Birbhum and Murshidabad. Unfortunately since the attack on poet Shamsur Rahman till the killing of Rajib, no one was convicted though there is a long standing demand to try the militants and terrorist under Anti Terrorism Act of 2009 (amended in 2012).
In the last 40 years, the country has witnessed the alarming mushroom growth of Quomi madrasas without any sort of government control and subsequently most of them have become incubators of nurturing militants. So far none of these madrasas have managed to produce any religious scholar worth naming. Even a country like Pakistan has attempted to control these breeding grounds of militants but the failure of the Bangladesh Government has contributed in the creation of killers of Babu and others. It may be safely said that Babu is not the last victim of these religious fanatics. There will be many more to come unless the government is serious enough to take action against these bigots. Delay in action may result in losing the Bangladesh that three million martyrs dreamt of in 1971 and transforming the country into another Afghanistan as Hiranmay Karlekar forecasted. These demons should be made to understand that the reach of the government is much wider than they think.
The writer is a former Vice-chancellor, University of Chittagong. Currently he teaches at ULAB, Dhaka.