Ahmed Rajib Haider

Ahmed Rajib Haider (আহমেদ রাজিব হায়দার) (Non Muslim)(1982 - February 15, 2013) was a prominent atheist anti-Islamic blogger in Bangladesh who used to go by the pseudonym 'Thaba Baba' (থাবা বাবা). On February 15 after comments he posted online about religious fundamentalism in the country were deemed offensive, he was hacked to death by machete-wielding activists from a new militant group associated with the Jamaat-e-Islami party.^[1][2] He was also known for his anti-Islamic blog posts.^[3]

An architect by profession, Haider had devoted himself to the liberal cause. His blog was among those that ignited the 2013 Shahbag protests. The protesters were seeking that the perpetrators of the mass killings during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 be brought to trial, a move that is widely seen as being aimed at the radical Islamists.^[4] The protests were widely opposed by Islamic groups, who have been organizing counter marches under the banner of a newly formed group called Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh (lit. "protector of Islam).^[5]

Grisly Murder: February 15, 2013

On the night of February 15, he was attacked as he was leaving his house in the Mirpur area of Dhaka. When his mutilated body was found lying in a pool of blood,^[6] his friends could not recognize him.^[5] The following day, his coffin was carried through Shahbagh Square in a public protest by more than 100,000 people^[7] The prime minister Sheikh Hasina visited the family in Palashnagar, Dhaka, and promised action.

On March 2, the Bangladesh Detective bureau arrested five members of the newly formed extremist organization Ansarullah Bengali Teams^[2] for the murder. The organization was an offshoot of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, a student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami political party. The team takes its ideology from Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemen-based Al-Qaeda activist who was killed in 2011. The Detective Branch has said that the attack was masterminded by the Islamic Chhatra Shibir leader 'Rana'<^[8] from Jamaat-e-Islami party's youth wing,^[9] who had not been located two months after the event^[10]

The five students, Faisal bin Nayeem alias Dwip, Maksudul Hassan Anik, Ehsan Reza Rumman, Naim Sikder Irad, and Nafis Imtiaz, have confessed to the crime in front of a magistrate.^[8] The students come from affluent backgrounds.^[11] The day before the murder, Maksudul Anik, Ehsan Raza and Nayeem Irad came to play cricket in the grounds in front of Haider's house, as part of the "Intel team".^[8]

Islamic attacks against atheist bloggers

The incident occurred when the 2013 Shahbag protests reached its peak in Bangladesh this past January. Though the attacks against atheist and secular-minded writers are hardly a new phenomenon in Bangladesh, the death of a 30-year-old architect and a member of the Shahbag activist took the struggle of Bangladeshi freethinkers to a different dimension.^[12] The murder of Rajib Haider now is seen as a part of a larger attack against "atheist bloggers" in Bangladesh. The Islamic groups have been rallying for a blasphemy law ^[13] along the lines of the Blasphemy law in Pakistan. A month before the attack on Haider, the award-winning blogger Asif Mohiuddin was attacked outside his house by four youths,^[14] also from the Ansarullah Bengali Team. Though seriously injured, Asif survived the attack. His attackers were apprehended in April based on leads from the Haider murder investigation.^[11] Another activist named Saniur, popularly known as 'Nastik nobi' (Atheist Prophet) in the blog and Facebook community was also got stabbed by anonymous miscreants.^[15]

In March 2013 Asif's blog in somewherein banned by the BTRC included the award-winning popular blog^[16] was shut down by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission as part of a closure of a number of blogs in the 2013 Bengali blog blackout. In April, Asif was also arrested,^[17] along with three other bloggers.^[18] The crackdown on independent blogs, and the closure of the newspaper Amar Desh, has been strongly criticized by the Human Rights Watch.^[19] and IHEU,.^[20][21] Just after the bloggers got arrested, Mukto-Mona, an independent site of freethinkers and atheists of mainly Bengali and South Asian descent, issued a statement titled, ‘Bangladesh government squishing freedom of speech by arresting and harassing young bloggers inside the country’.^[22] Amnesty International also issued a statement titled, ‘Bangladesh: writers at risk of torture’.^[23] Center for Inquiry (CFI), requested the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to “pressure the government of Bangladesh to reverse its policy of arresting atheist bloggers who were critical to religion.” They sent a letter to Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook “to do all they can to raise public awareness of this situation.” Other influential organizations such as Free Society Institute of South Africa, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Global Voice Advocacy, and several other bodies have also called for immediate release of the Bangladeshi bloggers and appealed to several other foreign authorities to press Bangladesh on the issue.^[24] The worldwide protest and demonstrations were held on April 25 and May 2 to put pressure on Bangladeshi government to free the arrested bloggers. Several humanist groups (including Center for Inquiry, CFI-Canada, and the British Humanist Association, American Atheists and Secular Coalition for America, freethinkers of University of Missouri’s campus etc.) took part in places as far-reaching as the U.S., Canada (Ottawa, and New Brunswick), the UK, and Bangladesh.^[25] Many writers, activists, and prominent intellectuals around the world including Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin, Hemant Mehta, Maryam Namazie, PZ Myers, Avijit Roy, Anu Muhammad, Ajoy Roy, Qayyum Chowdhury, Ramendu Majumdar, Muhammad Zafar Iqbal publicly expressed their solidarity with the arrested bloggers.^[26] Three of the arrested bloggers eventually were released on bail,^[27] however court did not grant bail for Asif Mohiuddin and sent to prison on June 2, 2013.^[28] Bangladesh has finally released atheist blogger Asif Mohiuddin from prison, though he and other bloggers still faces charges,.^[29][30]

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