[So far this year, four bloggers and one
publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh — a tiny number for a country with a
population of around 160 million. But anonymous threats are common, and the
cumulative psychological effect has been profound, prompting public figures to
steer away from discussing the terrorist threat openly.]
 |
Bangladeshis
protested after the killing of Faisal Arefin Dipan, a publisher
of
secular books, in Dhaka.CreditA.M. Ahad/Associated Press
|
These
days, she is so alert to the sensation of men coming up behind her that when
she walks the halls of the university in Dhaka where she teaches, she will step aside,
heart racing, to let students pass. Her husband will no longer allow her to
take a car service to work, reasoning that in a city that is home to
well-resourced radical networks, “a driver can sell himself easily,” she says.
He drives her himself.
In
the past, Ms. Farzana could survey the danger from a professional distance,
reporting the facts each time militants murdered one of the bloggers
campaigning against fundamentalist Islam.
Then, last month, a shadowy group — the same
one that claimed responsibility for killing the bloggers — sent a letter to a television news channel warning
that unless media outlets stopped employing unveiled women as journalists, “the
outcome will be dreadful.” On Saturday,militants carried out
simultaneous attacks on
two book publishers — not secular activists, this time, but low-profile
businessmen who acted as intellectual supply lines for some of the country’s
most prominent writers.
Ms. Farzana, 37, cannot shake the feeling
that, as she puts it, “there is a blueprint,” and that someone, somewhere has
added her name to a list.
“I
am really scared this time,” she said. “I have something in mind that maybe
they would like to open up a new chapter and kill a woman. These days, you may
not have a single idea how you are related to the whole thing. But maybe you
are the target. You never know.”
So
far this year, four bloggers and one publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh — a tiny number for a country with a
population of around 160 million. But anonymous threats are common, and the
cumulative psychological effect has been profound, prompting public figures to
steer away from discussing the terrorist threat openly.
Salil
Tripathi, chairman of PEN International’s Writers in
Prison Committee, approached a long list of Bangladeshi writers for
a commentary after a blogger was killed in May.
All refused, saying that attaching their name to the subject would be too
dangerous. He was reduced to publishing a column written by an expatriate,
under a pen name.
By
threatening intellectuals, “you’re trying to silence opinion, and shape
opinion, and I think that’s happening,” said Mr. Tripathi, the author of “The
Colonel Who Would Not Repent,” a book about Bangladesh Pakistan
The
sensitivity has become so great, he said, that his Bangladeshi friends have
asked him not to tag them in Facebook posts that discuss attacks on bloggers.
“I
can’t think of any Bangladeshi intellectual who is writing under his or her
name on this issue,” he said.
Over the last month, the range of threats,
typically issued from anonymous accounts via social media, have broadened to
include foreigners, female journalists and members of the country’s Shiite
minority. A statement issued on Saturday titled “Who’s Next,” attributed to
Ansar al-Islam, the Bangladesh division of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent,
listed broad categories of targets, including “well-known writers,” poets,
“so-called intellectuals,” newspaper and magazine editors, actors and
journalists.
Organizers of the Dhaka Lit Fest, a gathering scheduled for late
November, fear that as many as 10 of their 70 featured authors will drop out.
Already,
many writers and opinion makers have withdrawn from public life. Ahmad Mostafa
Kamal, 45, a novelist whose name was included on a 2013 “hit list,” says he
rarely leaves his office and regularly turns down invitations to speak in
public.
“My
life is totally isolated,” he said. “A writer always feels the need to move
everywhere. They have to talk. They have to go to public places. They have to
talk to readers.”
Mr.
Kamal has never reported threats to the police, he said, because he thinks they
will tell him to leave the country. He has ruled out that possibility, but
after the weekend’s attacks the level of anxiety among his friends and family
has shot up.
“Last night, my son was talking with me, and
he was saying, ‘Father, will they kill you also?’ ” he said. “This
is my son. A teenager. He is asking me whether I will be killed. What can be my
answer?”
Similar
tremors were running through Ekattor TV, a
cable news channel whose editor in chief, Mozammel Babu, made it a policy to
hire women as reporters and anchors because, as he puts it, “women bashing
strong men, I like this.”
Mr.
Babu’s reporters are more and more cautious. One of his best-known faces,
Nobonita Chowdhury, discovered in June that her name was included on a hit list
of 25 celebrities known for their secular views. She is now on a hiatus from
television, for health reasons and for the sake of her family.
“My
brother freaked out,” she said. “He said: ‘Stop doing this. Stay home for me.’ ”
Another
of the station’s reporters, Farzana Rupa, 38, said she had decided against
covering the publisher attacks over the weekend. After credible threats
appeared on her Facebook page, she stopped driving her own car. But the drivers
she hired kept quitting – six of them in a row — saying they believed that
working with her was too risky. Recently, Ms. Rupa has begun talking frankly
about the danger to her daughter, who is 8, and other children in her
household.
“I
tell them, ‘Nowadays, anything can happen to Mom, so you should learn to be
independent,’ ” she said.
For
Ms. Farzana, the challenge since Saturday has been to think about anything
except the heightened sense of danger. Her mind wanders to the question of what
the man on the street would say if she was, in fact, murdered.
“Deep in my heart, I feel that maybe, if it
happens, people will say, ‘Why did she have to cross the limits?’ ” she said.
“People really think: ‘Why are these women coming out without veils? Why are
these women talking too much? Why are these women so outspoken?’ ”
Julfikar
Ali Manik contributed reporting.
