Freethinking at stake

২৩ শে আগস্ট, ২০১৬ দুপুর ১২:০৪

Something strange is bogling in my head now. Why do I need to care about my safety if I say something frankly? Guess I got nothing much to do.
I so can't digest the mishaps happening around my country. Well it dates back a long time seventies.
These brutal murders of and attacks on the secularist people are not an isolated incident, nor are they a new one in Bangladesh. The assassination of the progressive Bengali intellectuals during 1971 by the racist Pakistan occupation army and their fanatical collaborators– the Razakar, Al-Badr and Al-Shams was the first of its kind. This was, in some sense, far more premeditated than the notorious Holocaust. Although a few could escape by pure chance, the mission was the elimination of all the secular intellectuals from Bangladesh with a view to crippling the country with fundamentalism and religious militancy. The intellectuals were rightly accused of trying to liberate the country from Pakistani subjugation and freeing the society from religious orthodoxy and fanaticism. What they had believed has many things in common with the recently killed bloggers.

The threat of death on the freethinking writers/bloggers has become a day-to-day affair in Bangladesh. The government sounds is if the circumstances are within control, but the crisis continues unabated. The threats come and are executed. The implication is the same—the bloggers are not the writers of choice for them. What the bloggers are doing in the name of writing smacks of profanities and does not spare the feelings of others. It is not understood what they really mean by ‘sparing others’ feelings’, but it could be easily realized that the free thought bashers’ interests would always go against the true spirit of our independence, democracy and secularism. If one writes under compulsion catering to their tastes, it would be far from what we call good writing. Good writing can never been done under stick and carrot situation. So, the freethinking writers tend to pay no heed to their advice. However, who is held responsible for these threats and murders is an open secret. Though apparently seen in different names and identities, they are one and the same and not the ones to give in all too easily. They would keep gnawing at the freethinkers for ages to come.


We are living in such societies where voices of dissent are unwelcome and nonconformism is treated as an offence. There is, however, no harm in intolerance to dissenting voices and nonconformity if it works as a benign neglect or finds a non-violent expression and finally finishes in fun. But if it turns violent and fixes a price on the dissenter’s head, it cannot be appreciated anyway. The ones who are prone to threaten the freethinkers have targeted almost all the noted secular writers/ bloggers in the country. The Ansarullah Bangla Team (ATB), the militant group that has been blamed for the series of murders of secular writers in Bangladesh, has published a hit list of bloggers and activists in and around the country, threatening to kill them sooner or later. In this wake, we are very sad to hear that, many have fled to safety. We apprehend that negligence or inefficiency on the part of the government in providing a strong check to this anti-liberation and anti-humanism force may take a heavy toll on our freethinkers and the freedom of expression.

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