Is Bangladesh burying its secular voices?
Under Sheikh Hasina's watch, atheism has become a derogatory word worthy of brutal punishment.
Sunday, April 24th 2016
Ikhtisad Ahmed
Bangladeshi's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina knows the pain of loss better than most. She has lived with it since the slaughter of her family on August 15, 1975. Her promise to bring the murderers of Rajib Haider – an architect and atheist, secular blogger killed in Dhaka for his views on February 15, 2013 – to justice, had the honesty of someone who deeply empathised with his family, whom she was visiting to offer her condolences and grieve with in person. Three years later, Bangladesh still awaits fulfilment of that promise.
Two days after Bangladesh turned 45, the High Court took two minutes to dismiss a petition that had been a nuisance to the country’s fiercely independent judiciary since 1988.
Following the same court’s ruling in October 2010, secularism, enshrined in the constitution as one of the four founding principles of the nation, was revived when the document was amended for the 15th time by a legislative branch committed to keeping the nation and its laws from becoming archaic.
The compromise of retaining Islam as the state religion, however, meant that the constitution was rendered incongruent and toothless owing to its inherent contradictions.
http://scroll.in/article/807044/is-bangladesh-burying-its-secular-voices
