Shahbag movement - Rebuilding Bengali Identity (by Asif Mohiuddin)
[Moderator's Note: Asif Mohiuddin who is currently in prison, considered as one of the most outspoken atheist and humanist bloggers of Bangladesh. His writing—which was heavily critical of religious dogma, bigotry and superstition—and his political activism including the Jagannath University protests angered the government, as well as marked the beginning of the threats he received from fundamentalists. These threats eventually led to action in mid-January this year. Mohiuddin was brutally stabbed and severely injured by three suspected but unidentified Islamist fundamentalists. When Asif returned from hospital and started writing again, the BTRC (The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission) allegedly told the blog communities to stop spreading his messages. Complying with the threat, Somewherein, Bangladesh's first Bangla language community blog site, ultimately banned Mohiuddin, who used to write there regularly (and was even 2012's User Winner for "Best Social Activism Campaign" at the Deutsche Welle's International Blog Awards). Now he has been arrested and still in jail. While Asif has been an object of criticism for a number of groups for various reasons, many young freethinkers in Bangladesh look to him as a nonconformist idol who has fought against the tyrannical state machinery until the very end. Asif's last status and a forceful writeup (published in richarddawkins.net just before he got arrested) about the arrested bloggers reads:
In Which Direction Will the State Go? The state is at loggerhead with Fundamentalism
Moderator's Note: Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, an eminent mukto-mona blogger, was arrested on April 1st on charges of Blasphemy. He is one among the free-spirited online writers who are being punished for virally spreading their reason-based opinions. Not once did Shuvo violate any stated Bangladeshi law, yet his actions have been declared as a crime in the eye of the government. What's more twisted is that Bangladesh does not even have an official "blasphemy" law, like Pakistan does. Human rights organizations all over the world are berating Bangladesh for restricting the bloggers' right to freedom of speech (Please refer to the article published in Skeptic under the title, 'The Struggle of Bangladeshi Bloggers') .