On 4 April 2013 (0700 GMT) all

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the ...

blogs were blacked out for an indefinite time to protest the arrest of four bloggers in

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million pe ...

(Moshiur Rahman Biplob, Rasel Parvez, Subrata Adhikari Shuvo and

Asif Mohiuddin Asif Mohiuddin (born 24 February 1984) is a Bangladeshi anti-islamic and secular activist, religious critic and feminist. In 2012, he won The Bobs-Best of Online Activism award from Deutsche Welle, who stated that "Asif's blog was one of th ...

). The blackout was to back a demand for the unconditional release of the arrested bloggers. A fundamentalist group named ''

Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh ( bn, হেফাজতে ইসলাম বাংলাদেশ) is an Islamic Advocacy group of madrassah teachers and students. In 2013, it submitted to the government of Bangladesh a 13-point charter, which in ...

'' started a campaign to hang freethinking bloggers, and demanding tough blasphemy laws. In response, the government started monitoring Bengali blog sites and sending letters to their authorities to terminate the alleged "anti-religious" blogs and provide information about the alleged "anti-religious" bloggers. Individual bloggers showed their solidarity with this blackout by changing their profile photos on Facebook and by

tweeting Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, an ...

with the #MuzzleMeNot

hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...

. Different international organizations expressed deep concern about taking free-thinking bloggers into custody. After 92 hours of blackout, blogs returned online by publishing a press release on their central Facebook page.

Background

From the beginning of the

Shahbag protest On 5 February 2013, protests began in Shahbag, Bangladesh, following demands for the Capital punishment in Bangladesh, execution of Abdul Quader Mollah, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment and convicted on five of six counts of war c ...

, bloggers came out on the streets to demand capital punishment of

Abdul Quader Molla Abdul Quader Molla ( bn, আব্দুল কাদের মোল্লা; 14 August 1948 – 12 December 2013) was a Bangladeshi Islamist leader, writer, and politician of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, who was convicted of war crimes and ...

, a war criminal of the

Bangladesh liberation war The Bangladesh Liberation War ( bn, মুক্তিযুদ্ধ, , also known as the Bangladesh War of Independence, or simply the Liberation War in Bangladesh) was a revolution and armed conflict sparked by the rise of the Bengali ...

and a leader of

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami ( bn, বাংলাদেশ জামায়াতে ইসলামী, Bānglādēsh Jāmāyatē Islāmī, Bangladesh Islamic Assembly), previously known as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, or Jamaat for short, was ...

. During the protests, a controversial author, pro-Shahbag blogger and online activist

Sunnyur Rahman Irreligion in Bangladesh is rare and uncommon publicly. A Gallup (company), Gallup survey from 2014 - 2015 found that approximately less than 1% of Bangladeshis identified as convinced atheists. Bangladesh has 166.3 million people as of 2021 esti ...

, popularly known as 'Nastik Nobi' (Atheist Prophet) in the blog community, was stabbed on 7 March 2013. Another pro-Shahbag blogger

Ahmed Rajib Haider Ahmed Rajib Haider (died 15 February 2013) was a Bangladeshi atheist blogger. He used to blog in the blogging communities namely Somewhereinblog.net, Amarblog.com and Nagorikblog.com and used the pseudonym Thaba Baba. On 15 February 2013, afte ...

who was critical of Jamaat-e-Islami, was killed by a few Jamaat activists. Afterwards, a Jamaat backed Islamic fundamentalist organisation started a violent protest demanding the death penalty for all allegedly "anti-Islamic" bloggers, and they termed all participants of the Shahbag movement as

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

. The spokesperson of the Shahbag movement ''Imran H. Sharkar'' said, ''Hifazat-e-Islam is desperate to thwart the war crimes trial and the process of banning Jamaat-e-Islami''. Afterwards, the government of Bangladesh started monitoring the blogosphere and sent letters to the Bengali blog authorities to terminate the alleged "anti-religious" blogs and to provide information about the alleged "anti-religious" bloggers. On the night of 1 April 2013, three bloggers were arrested by the detective branch (DB) police. Blogger Rasel Pervez, a prominent physicist and blogger and Mashiur Rahman Biplob were arrested on 1 April 2013 from their house. Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, who is a masters student of the Bengali department at the

University of Dhaka The University of Dhaka (also known as Dhaka University, or DU) is a public research university located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is the oldest university in Bangladesh. The university opened its doors to students on July 1st 1921. Currently i ...

, was also arrested on the same day from his university dormitory.
Another blogger Asif Mohiuddin was called to the police station on 3 April 2013, and when he went there, he was arrested. Earlier, the

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) ( bn, বাংলাদেশ টেলিযোগাযোগ নিয়ন্ত্রণ কমিশন) is an independent commission founded under the Bangladesh Telecommunic ...

forced the Bengali blog ''

somewhereinblog.net Somewhere in... blog (also known as Samu) is a Bengali blogging website. ''বাঁধ ভাঙার আওয়াজ'' or ''Voice of breaking obstacle'' is the slogan of the blog. It is the first public blogging site in Bengali established ...

'' to remove all writings of Asif Mohiuddin. The move was criticized by

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...

, Amnesty International,

Center for Inquiry The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government. History The Center for Inquiry was established in 19 ...

Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...

Committee to Protect Journalists The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is an American independent non-profit, non-governmental organization, based in New York City, New York, with correspondents around the world. CPJ promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journ ...

, and several other bodies.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bengali blog blackout, 2013 Internet-related activism Internet-based and online protests Internet censorship 2013 in Bangladesh 2013 protests

Background

See also

References