Image courtesy: millenniumpost.in

Riots that broke over a blasphemous Facebook post criticizing Prophet Muhammad in Bangladesh on Sunday left at least four people dead.

This death toll is expected to rise as some of the injured are stated to be in a critical condition.

Thousands of Muslims took to the streets in the town of Borhanuddin, about 116kms from Dhaka, to protest against the offensive social media post that was allegedly written by a Hindu man.

An investigation by BBC revealed that Biplab Chandra Baidya, a resident of the Bhola Island in Borhanuddin had allegedly made the comment from his Facebook profile criticizing the Prophet and his youngest daughter. In retaliation to this, around 20,000 Muslims demonstrated at a prayer ground to demand the execution of the young Hindu man for inciting religious hatred.

These protests soon took a violent turn, in response to which the police had to resort to firing. The police claimed that the firing that left 4 dead and at least 50 injured, was done in self-defense as the mob had started throwing rocks at the police officials. The injured also included 10 members of the police. Bangladesh’s leading newspapers reported that at least a 100 people had been hurt in the violence.

The police also resorted to the use of tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Border Guards spokesperson Shariful Islam also said that the police had sent a platoon force by helicopter to the spot.

“At least four people were killed and up to 50 people were injured,” police inspector Salahuddin Mia told the AFP news agency.

Lies

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina urged the crowd to calm down and said that the Facebook account of the man charged with inciting religious tension was hacked by a Muslim person and used to “spread lies”. She said that Baidya was blackmailed to pay 20,000 Bangladeshi Taka (USD 235) or blasphemous content would be posted from his Facebook account.

Bhola Island’s Deputy Police Chief Sheikh Sabbir said that the BiplabBaidya had come to the police station on Saturday, claiming that his account was hacked. Though the charges against him haven’t been dropped the police also believe that Baidya’s account was hacked and the contents were spread through Facebook messenger.

On Monday, the Bhola police enforced an indefinite ban on rallies and booked more than 5,000 unidentified persons for their role in the protests.

Recurring Incidents
The current unrest is not the first time the country is witnessing a situation where the minority community is under attack. The same modus operandi of hacking the account of a person from the minority community and posting derogatory material to give rise to communal hate, has been in use before.

In 2016, angry members from the Muslim community attacked Hindu temples in eastern Brahmanbaria over a post that allegedly mocked one of Islam’s holiest sites.

2012 saw Muslim mobs torching Buddhist monasteries, houses and shops in the coastal area of Cox’s Bazaar following an allegedly defamatory post of a Buddhist youth about the Quran.

The protestors have kept a 6 point demand letter that includes the demand for the execution of the Hindu youth and the removal of the local police chief, failing which they will continue with their protest.

While the PM has ensured swift action in the matter, the lack of verdicts delivered in previous cases of violence point out at the process to finding the truth being a difficult one.

Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country with 90% of the 16.80 crore of the population being Muslims.

Related
Why are Indian Muslims Silent Over Atrocities against Hindus in Neighbouring Bangladesh?
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How Social Media, TV Use Fake News: Basirhat Riots
 

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Events of mass communal carnage have rocked the history of post-Independent India. These episodes have been characterised by impunity, targetting minorities and an almost state-sponsored operation. In their book, Splintered Justice: Living the Horror of Mass Communal Violence in Bhagalpur and Gujarat (2016), Warisha Farasat and Prita Jha investigate into two major communal massacres, of Bhagalpur in 1989 and Gujarat in 2002. Relying not just on official papers but also on in-depth testimonies of many survivors, they systematically chart the troubling failures of India’s criminal justice system to secure justice for survivors of hate violence.

In this interview with Kanika Katyal of the Indian Writers’ Forum, Warisha Farasat talks about the book came into existence, the challenges faced by women in their battle for justice, the Bilkis Bano judgement and more.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

The post “These were not riots; these were out and out pogroms”: Warisha Farasat appeared first on SabrangIndia.

LZ: You’ve repeatedly talked about being under “siege” as a writer in India today, and it is hardly – if at all – metaphorical.  Can you describe what you mean, and how would you define the cultural, literary and political climate that you and other Indian writers live in today? 
GH: I wish siege were more metaphorical. In fact, the metaphor is a shockingly real – or surreal – thing standing before us like a solid wall, and this is true of far too many places in the world. What does this siege look like in India?  I would not separate cultural and political. In India, the establishment loves it if culture can be reduced to what they can control, a soft, “feminine” sort of thing – a kind of on-going festival of incredible India with colourful costumes, entertaining exotica. We need to make it clear that culture is not just this sponsored exhibition of cultural practice; it is not just “high culture”; but a dynamic range of transacting, colluding, colliding ways of life. Such a view allows us to include multiple languages, multiple locations, choice of religion or no religion. What we eat, how we dress, the historical figures we admire or critique – everything is a part of the culture and sub-cultures we live. It may seem I am repeating the obvious. But we need to do this, because we cannot debate free speech in depth today in India without taking on questions about the conditions necessary in a diverse country, to live the various possibilities of free speech. This is why free speech gets reduced into fragments, such as bans on books and films. It’s actually much more.

The cultural climate in India at the moment: it’s bad news. And the list is very long, we are spoilt for choice, which is why I can only highlight a few aspects. First and most obvious is the violence that has become a part of “culture”. There’s the language of discourse – threats to beat up or gang-rape or kill anyone who you disagree with. There’s the lynching of someone who you suspect ate beef or someone who is transporting cows. (The most recent lynching, of a boy called Junaid travelling on a train, has not even had this alleged excuse.) There’s the violence against Dalits because they speak up against ongoing discrimination, and the dehumanising things they have always been forced to do, such as manual scavenging. There’s the increasing violence against women – it’s always been there, against women of certain castes and communities – but now the net has been spread to include even the relatively privileged. And, of course, there’s the violence against entire regions, peoples, in highly militarised places, Kashmir, the Northeast and Chhattisgarh for example, and this violence is given a semblance of the workings of law and order, the armed forces keeping peace and so on.

I list these which do not seem obviously like cultural territory, because they are. This is what provides the context for the practice of an ideology that is afraid of a writer, a book, a film, a painting. It’s not just “intolerance”; it’s a kind of cultural civil war. For the rightwing “cultural” organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its range of offspring, diversity is a problem. If you want to homogenise a place like India, where else would you begin your war but in the cultural space? So you divide tasks among government bodies, semi-autonomous bodies, the army and police, the media and, of course, multiple “armies” of real life and virtual hoodlums. Let’s take one small strand: writing. Writers are killed for their views (Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare), for their questions (M.M. Kalburgi). Writers have been hounded by rightwing goons for their imagination (Perumal Murugan), for their language (Urdu writers), or for their critique of the state (Arundhati Roy). Colleges and universities are regimented so that students and teachers cannot use these spaces as they must, if debate and speculation, education, reading and writing, culture itself, are to happen. And I am only citing the most obvious examples; many of us have written about and spoken about other examples; and still there must be any number we don’t even know about.

As for painting, making films or music: the censorship ranges from the official to the unofficial – that is, intimidation by a few goons. It ranges from the ban of a book, or the hounding of a writer, to some truly bizarre forms. An artist who was making a point about cows eating plastic got into trouble in the Jaipur Art Fair because he had a cow, made of fibreglass, I think, floating in the air. The chair of the Film Certification Board insisted that the word “balls” had to be replaced with the word “cats”, and that the kisses he found too long in a James Bond film should be shortened. A film on the effects of demonetisation on people’s lives got into trouble. The most recent instance is that a filmmaker who has made a film on Nobel Prizewinning economist Amartya Sen has been asked to beep out words such as “cow”, “Gujarat” and “Hindutva”. In addition to this censorship by official bodies, censorship increasingly happens on the street, in art galleries, in educational spaces, or on the film sets even before a film is made. Someone or the other, some group or the other, claims “hurt sentiment”. There’s intimidation, violence; and the current establishment either offers support, or looks the other way.
 
Read the full interview on Writers and Free Expression.

Published first in Writers and Free Expression .
 

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