This past 16th of April, the Dhaka Magistrate Court in Bangladesh accepted a blasphemy lawsuit filed against 36 writers and their accomplices over allegations of religious blasphemy. It was reported that this lawsuit was filed over contributions made to a magazine titled ‘Atheist in Bangladesh’. The 36 individuals accused, are comprised of the magazine’s editor Arifur Rahman, publisher ‘Secular Publishers’, contributors, along with quite a few LGBT activists and writers as well. Some of the names of the accused writers are Abu Hanif, Shujon Chandra Deb, M D Abdullah Al-Hasan, Syed Ishtiak Hossain Shawon, Enayetul Huda, Abu Taher Muhammad Mostofa, Shahadat Hossain, Masud Rana, Foysal Hossain Onik, Saiful Islam, Abdul Ahad Shanto, Tahera Sultana and many others.
It is worth mentioning that ‘Atheist in Bangladesh’ continues to work diligently towards establishing freedom of speech and expression within the Bangladeshi society. They have had quite a few lawsuits filed against them in recent times, across many different courts in Bangladesh. When we got in touch with the magazine’s editor Mr Arifur Rahman he expressed deep despair at the news. He stated that, “I have now developed a deep distaste towards these lawsuits whereby we criticised and harassed because of what we write, what I write. We have constantly been slammed with lawsuits, our website is being blocked in Bangladesh and we continue to be treated unfairly. And yet Bangladesh as a whole is completely oblivious to it. Instead if we discuss anything related to LGBT rights or religion as it were, we are subjected to unrelenting torture both from government and private avenues.”
This case is being investigated by Bangladesh Polices’ special division, Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI). In order to discuss the matter we placed a call to Mr Asaduzzaman, the chief of Police. He declined to speak to us over the telephone. However he did say that, “We are investigating the matter as per the instructions issued from court. For now we have nothing to discuss here. If according to Bangladeshi law these individuals are found guilty, then they will be arrested or a full investigations report will be compiled.”
