This article appears in the Witness section of the Winter 2018 issue of the New Humanist. Subscribe today.
In May 2017, Md. Sazzadul Hoque, a 21-year-old Bangladeshi blogger, posted an article on Facebook about his atheism. In it, he wrote “I wish to live like a human, not as a Muslim. The things I was taught and made to believe are wrong.” The post went viral in Bangladesh. Soon, his Facebook account was suspended. It was not long before the threatening phone calls began. Hoque was expelled from college in Dhaka and evicted from his lodgings. He left the capital for his home village. Soon after his arrival, the threats resumed, targeting not just Hoque but the relatives who gave him shelter. “I realised I would be slaughtered like cattle if I stayed in Bangladesh, so I fled the country and moved to India,” Hoque told New Humanist.
His fears were not unfounded. Since 2013, there has been a spate of brutal killings of atheist thinkers, bloggers and publishers. Within a few months in 2015, four were murdered. Religious minorities – Hindus and Christians – as well as Muslims speaking out against extremism, have also been targeted. Many of the attacks have taken place in broad daylight, using machetes. Responsibility has mainly been claimed by a local ISIS offshoot, or by Ansarullah Bangla Team, another extremist group. The brazenness of the attacks demonstrates a level of impunity. There have been few consequences. The attacks have also happened concurrently with a government-led crackdown on free expression. As we reported in Autumn 2015, there is scant state protection for those at risk: “The government appears unwilling, or unable, to stand with atheists. Instead, in an attempt to appease Islamists, it has ramped up its own actions against ‘blasphemous’ bloggers.”
Hoque, like 96 per cent of the population in Bangladesh, grew up Muslim. He was devout. but always had questions. “No one could answer,” he says. “Most of the time, I was told not to question religious authority.” That changed in high school, when Hoque had a teacher who was an atheist. Although Hoque was initially shocked at the idea that someone might not have faith, he admired the teacher, who engaged with his questions about theological inconsistencies. “He provoked me to see things differently. My lens of knowledge slowly changed from black to colour.”
Ultimately, Hoque renounced religion. “It wasn’t easy, but as I drifted towards humanism I felt like I was taking a fresh breath out of the water. Asking questions became compulsion. I couldn’t stop.” He wrote on Facebook about rising extremism, highlighting examples of bigotry against religious minorities and the non-religious. He was vocal about his views on religion. His family disowned him.
As killings of atheist writers ramped up, Hoque blogged about the restrictions on freedom of speech and the lack of protection for his fellow writers. He wrote about political corruption and LGBT rights, publishing on his own website, his Facebook page and a series of Bangladeshi blogs catering to the country’s small community of self-described freethinkers.
For the last two years, attacks on atheists in Bangladesh have dropped out of the headlines. The worst of the violence took place between 2013 and 2016, with 48 murders of atheists, activists, foreign nationals and religious minorities. But Hoque’s story demonstrates that the threat of violence, along with a clampdown on free expression, has not disappeared Since his post about religion went viral in May 2017, Hoque has received so many death threats that he has lost count. He has been the target of cyberattacks and hacking attempts which have seen his social media accounts temporarily suspended. He has been warned that India might not be safe either, and has received threats from fundamentalists there. Living in hiding, his studies have been interrupted and his mental health has suffered. As the months inch by, his opportunities for a visa extension are running out, and he is not sure where to go next. What is certain is that he cannot return to Bangladesh.
“I am homeless because of my writing and activism, for speaking for freethinkers. My life is in danger due to speaking about humanism, secularism and LGBT rights,” he says. “I am living an inhuman life. But in spite of immense threats, I haven’t stopped my writing. At home, people’s freedom of thought and expression is being violated. The conscious people of Bangladesh are being restricted from speaking the truth.”
