By The Bengal Voice
After the interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, came to power in Bangladesh, the country’s civil society was severely repressed in the name of morality and managerial purity.
Anyone who believes in free thought, freedom of expression, and civil rights is now the target of state reprisals and attacks by radical extremists.
Shahriar Kabir, a human rights activist and president of the 1971 Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, has been in jail for nearly 10 months. Hindu and minority rights activist Chinmoy Prabhu Das has been detained in a false case.
Former Chief Justice ABM Khairul Hoque has been sent to a seven-day remand by a Dhaka court.
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Prof Abul Barkat, who writes about the source of funding for the militants and writes against them, has been arrested.
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report highlighted the political repression of the opposition, in which Dhaka Mayor Atiqul Islam was accused of 36 murders committed while he was not in Bangladesh.
It said the interim government has used arbitrary detention to target perceived political opponents and has yet to deliver systemic reforms to protect human rights.
Meanwhile, the government is facing enormous challenges, including an alarming surge in mob violence, political violence, and harassment of journalists by political parties and other non-state groups, such as religious hardliners hostile to womenโs rights and LGBT people.
The continuing torture and deaths in custody highlight the urgent need for security sector reform.
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The HRW also condemned mass arrests and the naming of thousands of people as accused in the cases filed over the July 16 violence in Gopalganj, where five people were killed in gunshots by the Bangladesh Army and the police.
This repression is not just a political repression; it is a structural “deep repression” against democracy that seeks to silence the country’s judiciary, academia, media, and civil society.
Under the cover of the government, educationists and university professors, judges and lawyers, human rights activists, journalists and writers, former government officials and election commissioners, women’s rights activists are being subjected to repressive mob attacks.
The government, which is shouting for reforms, is oppressing the respected members of the civil society; on the other hand, it is releasing the militants.
Meanwhile, Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) chief Mufti Jasimuddin Rahmani has been released from jail.
Shafiur Rahman Farabi, a member of militant organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, has been released from life imprisonment in a case filed over the murder of US-based blogger and scientist Avijit Roy in Dhaka in 2015.
The main instigator of this repression is not only the law enforcement agencies, but this vindictive campaign is being carried out under the shadow of extremist ideological political rings.
Democracy in Bangladesh is in crisis. People who speak the truth today are facing job loss. Those who are protesting injustice are being subjected to cases and mobs. And for those who have remained silent, the reason for their silence is only fear.
This reign of terror is not a democratic state but a dictatorship run by silent extremists.
The Bengal Voice: Writer and Activist
English