This was to have been published in Bangladesh over a month ago but had to be moved to Assam and the US because journalists in Bangladesh face violent retaliation for criticizing the government. Facts mean less to the current government there than their own power does. Much thanks to my friends and colleagues at SindhuNews, their multi-religious Assam students; and especially Arjun Chowdhury and Shonu Nangia.
With Americans seemingly distracted from global events by the pandemic, the election, and the transfer of power in December; it is not surprising that many people likely missed recent events in Washington that will have profound consequences for US-Bangladesh relations and for the people of Bangladesh. The first blow came on December 9, 2020, when the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its study on blasphemy laws, Violating Rights: Enforcing the World’s Blasphemy Laws, in which Bangladesh was featured prominently. USCIRF was created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act to provide a source of verified information for the United States to use in formulating foreign policy. Its data and conclusions are authoritative and will impact pertinent US actions, including funding and trade, which are critical for the Bangladeshi economy. As if to confirm that, only days later, both the United States Senate and the House of Representative passed resolutions condemning blasphemy laws as “inconsistent with international human rights standards,” and calling for their repeal globally. Only six countries were singled out by name: Russia, China, North Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Pakistan and Bangladesh were the only countries mentioned in the resolution more than once.
The report and the resolutions represent a new approach for US policy-makers, as they explicitly reject the two major excuses by which Bangladeshi officials have tried to cover up their nation’s atrocious human rights record. For while USCIRF found that 84 countries still have blasphemy laws, it also noted that 81 percent of all cases where states enforced them came from Bangladesh, along with Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and six others. Is that the company where we should find a country that calls itself democratic? According to USCIRF, the answer is no, as its report notes. “Governments’ enforcement of blasphemy laws undermines human rights, including freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression.” That, and the palpable fear of government-supported violence against minorities, dissenters, and their families, is a far cry from Bangladesh described in its constitution.
To help US policymakers and others make use of its findings, USCIRF noted that blasphemy laws often are hidden in other languages, but the words do not blunt their attack on free speech. So, for instance, as I noted in my statement to the Commission, Bangladesh’s blasphemy laws exist in Section 295A of the Bangladesh Criminal Code, which according to the US State Department, criminalizes “statements or acts made with a ‘deliberate and malicious’ intent to insult religious sentiments.”The fact that the same government responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Hindus gets to decide on the accused’s intent signifies that the law is part of the authoritarian social control exercised Sheikh Hasina and her cronies. It gets even more ominous for democracy, as Section 99of the code empowers “the government [to] confiscate all copies of a newspaper if it publishes anything subversive of the state or provoking an uprising or anything that creates enmity and hatred among the citizens or denigrates religious beliefs,” violating press freedom as well. Nor has there been an attempt to clarify their provisions. Keeping them vague makes arrest and prosecution possible merely on the feelings of one particular individual who claims to be aggrieved. More from the State Department: “While there is no specific blasphemy law, authorities use the penal code aswell as a section of the Information and Communication Technology Act to charge individuals.” In other words, the United States has stopped falling for Bangladeshi claims of innocence.
Bangladesh was also among a handful of nations that USCIRF cited in the report for depriving the accused of due process, something I’ve witnessed all too often. There is overwhelming evidence of government-sponsored action preventing attorneys for minority victims from getting due process for their clients, and this includes a capital case in the constituency Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has represented for almost a quarter-century. Moreover, the USCIRF report cited Bangladesh as one of the worst rights violators in its use of mob violence against alleged blasphemers. Only Pakistan was tagged as worse, and the two countries together accounted for 57.35 percent of all such cases worldwide; a pretty astounding statistic. Tellingly, USCIRF cited a report by the international legal group, Open Trial, entitled, “Bangladesh’s criminal justice system incapable of providing justice.” It finds that “witness tampering, victim intimidation and missing evidence” are typical and make fair trials impossible with the primary victims being minorities, women and children, the poor and disabled. Along with many others, it notes that such abuses of the criminal justice system exist despite the high-minded words of Bangladesh’s constitution. This is critical because one of Bangladesh’s go-to responses when we identify its anti-minority violence is to cite the words of its constitution, but no one’s buying that anymore. Few people give that much weight against verified evidence of government-tolerated attacks on Hindus and others.
In my formal statement to USCIRF, I referenced my own study of anti-Hindu violence during Bangladesh’s first COVID lockdown period. It found that from April 8 to May 15, 2020, a mere 38-day period, at least twelve different cases were brought by the Bangladeshi government against Hindus who were accused of violating the Digital Security Act by insulting religious sentiments on Facebook. It turns out, the alleged insults were made by hackers, but the government took the accused minority victims into custody “based only on rumor, a single allegation with no attempt at verification, and other unsubstantiated evidence. Before their arrest, these minorities were attacked and otherwise brutalized, but police never arrested known culprits who were witnessed committing assault, arson, robbery, and other criminal actions. Instead, they arrested and held the minority victims under the Digital Security Act for offending the criminals’ religious sentiments! The incidents also involved indiscriminate attacks on the entire Hindu community with, again, the minority victims being the only people arrested.” By accepting the principle of censoring free speech, the Bangladeshi government opened the door to those abuses and is being seen more and more as the author of these violent acts.
I noted further that the same period saw, “15 incidents of Hindu temples desecrated or destroyed, along with other acts of anti-Hindu religious desecration; and even when victims complained and the perpetrators were known, the government refused to prosecute.” So, while blasphemy laws are inherently contrary to the principles of free societies, the current Bangladesh government does not even pretend to implement them in accordance with its own constitution that claims to guaranty freedom to all citizens. Moreover, it further demonstrates the dishonesty inherent in the government’s insistence that its official state religion is compatible with secularism. Nonsense!
Over the years, Bangladesh has gotten away with excusing its anti-minority actions by talking about the ideals that gave birth to it, claiming that the real culprits were non-state actors, or offering ridiculous excuses—and believe me, I have heard them all. I’m not sure which one is my favorite. Was it when a Bangladeshi ambassador claimed that all the missing Hindus had fled to India “to find better matches for their children” or when a former Home Minister claimed that the entire matter is no worse than the decline in union membership in the United States?
Both the Senate and House resolutions enjoyed wide bi-partisan appeal, passing unanimously in the Senate and 386-3 in the House. More than perfunctory resolutions, they call “on the President and the Secretary of State to make the repeal of blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy laws a priority in the bilateral relationships of the United States with all countries that have such laws.” If Bangladesh wants to protect its export markets and its participation in UN peacekeeping (which is funded to a large extent by US taxpayers), it needs to take those resolutions seriously and protect all its citizens from violent and anti-democratic forces. Words are no longer enough. There are efforts underway to pass similar resolutions in the new Congress and Senate, and others are working to take stop US funding of these atrocities through trade and support for Bangladesh as a UN peacekeeper with bi-partisan support.
No one is claiming to be the new “British Raj,” but if Bangladesh wants to protect its critical markets in the US and its role in UN peacekeeping, it would do well to take note of the extensive and well-documented USCIRF report and hearing, as well as the strong support for it among US lawmakers. As we just saw in the Middle East, bad actors who believe Americans are distracted from international events during this power transition, have made a fatal error. This year marks a half-century since Bangladesh’s War of Independence. What better time than that for the Bangladeshi government to usher in a new era that begins to realize the promises of that revolution!