Keyboard heroes: Bangladesh's atheist bloggers speak out

Atheist bloggers are being brutally murdered one by one in Bangladesh. And yet, as I investigated  this story for BBC Our World, the extreme violence of the killings was not – for me at least - the most surprising thing.

Here are the facts in brief: in recent years, a group of people who deny the existence of God, using both rational arguments and dark and satirical humour to do so, has grown up on the Bangladeshi internet. In this mostly Muslim nation, these bloggers attracted the attention of Islamist groups who initially wanted them arrested. 

Now, something much darker has started happening.  Atheists are being brutally hacked to death, picked off one by one by a shadowy underworld of extremist groups. Four have been killed so far this year.

But that wasn’t the most surprising thing.

Avjit Roy, Reuters

Instead, after making our BBC World News film, the thing that stayed with me most was that Bangladesh’s online atheists and secular voices continue to speak out – including to our BBC team in frank on-camera interviews. 

In other words, here in the third most populous Muslim nation in the world, the rationalists and atheists are not only vocal and sometimes scathing about the Islamic faith - but they are also refusing to back down.

Bonya Rafida Ahmed, Supplied

The killers “think they can do whatever they want to,” I was told by Bonya Rafida Ahmed, the wife of perhaps the most famous atheist killed, Avijit Roy. “But there is also a very strong force in Bangladesh opposing it as well”.

She and her husband were attacked together in February. Bonya lost fingers and was scarred, but lived. But they murdered her husband in a manner that followed the same gruesome pattern of later killings. 

The couple are both well-known online writers. They had returned home from the US, where they now live, to the Dhaka Book Fair. They were attacked in the evening by a group of men with machetes.  

Bonya’s memory of what happened that night has been blocked out by fear – she only remembers blood all over her and her husband’s head in her lap. “I saw a body on the ground that had been chopped on the back of the head,” recalls an eyewitness who came upon the couple after they’d been attacked.

The body of slain Bangladeshi blogger, Washiqur Rahman, MUNIR UZ ZAMAN / AFP

Avijit Roy was the moderator of an online blog called “Free Thinking”.  After his murder another atheist blogger – Washiqur Rahman – posted the hashtag ‘I am Avijit’ to protest Avijit Roy’s killing. A month later he too was attacked and killed with machetes in a busy street in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

Bangladesh forensics police investigate the site where blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was hacked to death, in Sylhet on May 12, 2015, STR / AFP

This grim pattern was repeated with two more brutal murders of secular bloggers - Ananta Bijoy and Niloy Neel.

Remembering #NiloyNeel, #BDblogger killed for #FreeExpression on 8.7.15, at @PENamerican event at #BKBFpic.twitter.com/XQlbyOwXgp

— Karin Karlekar (@karinkarlekar) September 17, 2015

When we landed in Bangladesh, we wanted to speak to surviving bloggers about how this has affected them. Some of the blogging community left are atheists, but many others are better described as secularists – they want religion out of political life.

Given the dangers, I was fully prepared to offer them anonymity from our cameras.  I expected them– quite reasonably – to want to stay hidden.

But for the most part, they wanted to speak out.

“I have never been so terrified in all my life,” said Sobak, a young father-of-two.  We’ve used his nickname rather than his real name, but he spoke directly to our camera.

Sobak’s blog entries have criticised Islam, especially its attitudes to women and to religious minorities, and called for secular thinking. Like some other bloggers, he joined protests for secularism back in 2013.

Bangladesh-origin British citizen Touhidur Rahman, (2L), one of three men who have been arrested for the murder of two prominent atheist bloggers, is brought to court in Dhaka. AFP PHOTO / MUNIR UZ ZAMAN

In response, a large Islamic movement rose from Bangladesh’s madrassas. Hefazat -e-Islam also marched, but against atheist bloggers. This was new in Bangladesh, where Islamic political parties had long operated but where madrassas had rarely intervened in politics.

They helped draw up a list of known atheists. They wanted them arrested.

“Atheist bloggers are also human,” I was told by Mohammed Zafarullah Khan, the cleric who led that movement.  “But their activities are hardly ever acceptable and because of that we pleaded with the government to bring them to justice”.

I asked him: what about democracy?

“They have the right to speak and write but they can’t do whatever they like. No one should dare to speak against the Prophet Mohammed, nobody is allowed to do that. We have the right and power to punish such people”.

Hefazat -e-Islam deny any links to the spate of murders.  The police agree and say that extremist jihadi outfits are involved. 

Gallo Images/ Thinkstock

The growth of political Islam, the emergence of violent groups, and a clash between Islamists and liberals – these things are not unique in the Muslim world.  But in many countries with majority Muslim populations public declarations of atheism are rare. 

But Bangladesh  has a strong history of secular pride. What marks it out is the refusal of its secular and atheist voices to stop blogging, despite the violence directed at them. 

“All I know is that I must win,” said Sobak. “I will not be silenced, my keyboard must keep going. I will not accept defeat by a backward dogma. I must go on, no matter what”.

Our World: The Bangladesh Blogger Murders will be broadcast this weekend on BBC World News, at 13.30 & 18.30 SA Time on Saturday, 26 September and at 19.30 SA Time on Sunday,  27September.

The Author: Mukul Devichand is the editor of BBC Trending, the BBC’s bureau on the global internet.  He’s reported from countries all over the world for the BBC, making TV and radio documentaries.