SACW - 7 April 2015 | Save Bangladesh's Bloggers / Nepal: another lost decade / Pakistan: Curbing hate speech / India: Indoctrination & Dissent / One year after elections, Still no govt in Afghanistan / Washiqur Rahman - concern by International Front for Secularism / Slide towards autocracy in Turkey

Mon Apr 6 21:16:29 EDT 2015

South Asia Citizens Wire - 7 April 2015 - No. 2852 
[since 1996]
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Contents:
1. Bangladesh: Blogger Oyasiqur Rhaman killed in knife attack of 30 March 2015 - reports and statements
2. Bangladesh: We all killed Avijit and Oyasiqur | Zafar Sobhan
3. Bangladesh: Contempt of court notice against 23 persons for voicing concern over sentencing of Journalist David Bergman
4. Save Bangladesh's Bloggers | Tahmima Anam
5. Bangladesh: And then they came for Oyasiqur Rahman Babu ! Subhash Gatade
6. Pakistan: Peter Jacob on Curbing hate speech
7. Shrinking Space for Dissent - The B. G. Verghese Memorial Lecture by Gopalkrishna Gandhi (March 19, 2015)
8. India: Indoctrination in the guise of education | Rohit Dhankar
9. India: Higher education, higher meddling | Shahid Amin and Shobhit Mahajan
10. India: 'Cultural nationalism' of RSS, a dangerous idea | Salil Misra
11. India: RSS's Ghar Wapsi Bigot Rajeshwar Singh is Back With A Promotion | Shamsul Islam
12. India: "Development" Versus Constitutional Safeguards for the Tribal People - A PUCL Report
13. For the people of Fukushima – a song by Narayan Desai
14. India’s vote against the right of United Nations staff to benefits for spouses of the same sex (selected editorials)
15. India should say no to the RSS version of history | Ram Puniyani
16. India: Photos of protest against the Land Bill at Jantar Mantar, 6 April 2015
17. India: Illegal arrest and harassment of women and children at Village Kevadia of Narmada District on 28th March 2015 - Letter to NHRC
18. India: Shankarbigha - A foregone verdict | Manoj Mitta
19. Recent On Communalism Watch:
 - On murder of Washiqur Rahman - statement of concern by International Front for Secularism
 - Grooming women for jihad (Parvathi Menon)
 - Announcement: Discussion on Gujarat Control Terrorism and Organised Crime - GCTOC (9 April 2015, Ahmedabad)
 - India: Sewa Bharti Sangh Parivar'scharitable face; 
 - India: 600 VHP workers detained in violation of prohibitory orders in West Bengal
 - Announcement: Public Meeting on State Violence and the (Im)possibility of Justice: Lessons from Hashimpura (7th April @ Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi)
 - India: Beef ban just the beginning, Maharashtra government tells Bombay high court
 - Executive Summary of Report on Anti Christian Violence 2014
 - India: Minorities should get their dues
 - India: The ban on cattle slaughter threatens the livelihoods and ways of life (Anand Teltumbde)
 - The saffron censorship that governs India: Why national pride and religious sentiment trump freedom of expression | Zareer Masani
 - India: RSS & the web of idol worship (Kancha Ilaiah)
 - Hashimpura: The ugly truth about the state (Governance Now - March 26, 2015)
 - USA: A Hindutva outfit Hindu American Foundation article on History Standard Revision in Virginia
 - India: Christian persecution: fact or fiction?
 - India: Unfreedom director to lodge petition against censor board
 - I'm vegan, I work for animal rights and I oppose Maharashtra's beef ban
 - India: Racist Minister Giriraj Singh in Modi's Govt Shows True 'Colours': Only 'Fair' to Sack Him? - NDTV debate 

::: FULL TEXT :::
20. Nepal: Another lost decade - Editorial, Nepali Times
21. Afghan elections: One year on and still no government | David Loyn
22. Bangladesh: Climate of intolerance breeding fanatics
23. Mute Button | George Packer
24. The rise and rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan – and a slide towards autocracy in Turkey | Mustafa Coban

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1. BANGLADESH: BLOGGER OYASIQUR RHAMAN KILLED IN KNIFE ATTACK OF 30 MARCH 2015 - REPORTS AND STATEMENTS
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Barely a month after the Avijit Roy Roy was hacked to death in in Feb 2105, now a 27 year old blogger Oyasiqur Rhaman was attacked and killed in similar way in Dhaka on 30 March. See reports and statements

http://www.sacw.net/article10932.html

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2. BANGLADESH: WE ALL KILLED AVIJIT AND OYASIQUR | Zafar Sobhan
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It is not enough to condemn the killings. We need to understand how our own intolerance of free-thinking and of questioning religious belief and thought contributed to a climate conducive to such an atrocity.

http://www.sacw.net/article10960.html

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3. BANGLADESH: CONTEMPT OF COURT NOTICE AGAINST 23 PERSONS FOR VOICING CONCERN OVER SENTENCING OF JOURNALIST DAVID BERGMAN
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A tribunal in Dhaka Wednesday initiated contempt of court proceedings against 23 eminent persons for a statement they issued expressing concern over the sentence of Dhaka-based British journalist David Bergman for demeaning it.

http://www.sacw.net/article10944.html

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4. SAVE BANGLADESH'S BLOGGERS | Tahmima Anam
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Blogging has become a dangerous profession in Bangladesh. In February, a Bangladeshi-American computer engineer and founder of the secularist website Mukto-Mona, Avijit Roy, was hacked to death in a Dhaka street. Then this week, an atheist blogger named Washiqur Rahman was murdered in a similarly bloody attack. Both were killed for their views on religion.

http://www.sacw.net/article10966.html

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5. BANGLADESH: AND THEN THEY CAME FOR OYASIQUR RAHMAN BABU !
by Subhash Gatade
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Md Oyasiqur Rahman Babu , aged 27 years is dead. A travel agency executive by profession and a secular blogger by passion he was killed by radical Islamists in Tejgaon, Dhaka when he was going to office in Motijheel. The three assailants - who did not personally know each other - met just for planning the murder and then executed it with military precision.

http://www.sacw.net/article10940.html

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6. PAKISTAN: PETER JACOB ON CURBING HATE SPEECH
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Eradicating hate material comprehensively will require a revision of education policy, allowing religious diversity, academic freedom and acceptance of cultural plurality

http://www.sacw.net/article10978.html

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7. SHRINKING SPACE FOR DISSENT - THE B. G. VERGHESE MEMORIAL LECTURE BY GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI (MARCH 19, 2015)
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Full text of the B.G. Verghese Memorial Lecture by Gopalkrishna Gandhi was delivered on March 19, 2015 at the India International Center in New Delhi. Also link to the video recording of the full proceedings

http://www.sacw.net/article10967.html

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8. INDIA: INDOCTRINATION IN THE GUISE OF EDUCATION | Rohit Dhankar
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 The decision to introduce the Bhagavad Gita in the Haryana school curriculum goes against India’s secular character and its present policy of education
http://www.sacw.net/article10931.html

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9. INDIA: HIGHER EDUCATION, HIGHER MEDDLING | Shahid Amin and Shobhit Mahajan
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Garib ki joru sab ki bhaujai (A poor man's wife is fair game). If anything captures the goings-on in the HRD ministry since the reign of Kapil Sibal, it is this saucy peasant proverb from the cow belt. Irrespective of the shade of the successive Central governments, the HRD minister and functionaries display a propensity, Alice in wonderland-like, for exercising power unbridled by reason and reasonableness. This has come to the fore most recently

http://www.sacw.net/article10971.html

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10. INDIA: 'CULTURAL NATIONALISM' OF RSS, A DANGEROUS IDEA | Salil Misra
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Is it simply a coincidence that in the past few months, there has been a spate of violence against Christians, attacks on churches, a belligerent insistence on reconversion or “Ghar Wapsi” and similar events, in other words a new resurgence in the activities of the RSS/VHP? This has obviously caused embarrassment to the government at the Centre, which, nonetheless chose to remain quiet about it for a long time. How are all these events to be understood? Should one dismiss them as small unconnected episodes of little consequence? Or is there a larger pattern or a design behind it?

http://www.sacw.net/article10986.html

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11. INDIA: RSS'S GHAR WAPSI BIGOT RAJESHWAR SINGH IS BACK WITH A PROMOTION | Shamsul Islam
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Remember Rajeshwar Singh, the RSS functionary and president of the Dharm Jagran Samiti (DJS) who was at the forefront of the reconversion or ‘ghar wapsi' programmes in Uttar Pradesh in which some Muslims and Christians were reportedly ‘reconverted' to Hinduism. DJS in league with the Bajrang Dal was behind the reconversion of Muslims at Agra on 8 December 2014.

http://www.sacw.net/article10961.html

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12. INDIA: "DEVELOPMENT" VERSUS CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS FOR THE TRIBAL PEOPLE - A PUCL REPORT
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Sundergarh is a Schedule Five district in the north-western part of the state of Odisha. It has been a site of multiple movements for the right to self-determination historically, and also one of the regions that has made great sacrifices for the development of this country. As much as 67 per cent of the population lives in the rural areas. Sundergarh is the 2nd largest tribal district of Odisha having 51% of tribal population. The entire district is a Scheduled Area thus making the Fifth Schedule as well as Acts like PESA, OSATIP and special schemes meant for tribal communities under ITDAs applicable in the area.

http://www.sacw.net/article10984.html

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13. FOR THE PEOPLE OF FUKUSHIMA – A SONG BY NARAYAN DESAI
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India lost its pioneer anti-nuclear activist and eminent Gandhian Shri Narayan Desai last month. Narayan bhai founded 'Anumukti' (freedom from nuclear) after Chernobyl which became India's first anti-nuclear magazine. - Environment, Health and Social Justice

http://www.sacw.net/article10963.html

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14. INDIA’S VOTE AGAINST THE RIGHT OF UNITED NATIONS STAFF TO BENEFITS FOR SPOUSES OF THE SAME SEX (SELECTED EDITORIALS)
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The mix of bigotry, cowardice and pseudo-logic shown by the Indian government in voting against, and then losing the vote, on the right of United Nations staff to benefits for spouses of the same sex is fostered by the bizarre history of Section 377 of the penal code in India. India happened to be in the august company of Pakistan, China, Nigeria, Syria and Saudi Arabia, among several other nations, in voting against the official recognition of same-sex unions by the UN.

http://www.sacw.net/article10933.html

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15. INDIA SHOULD SAY NO TO THE RSS VERSION OF HISTORY
by Ram Puniyani
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It was the British who introduced communal historiography in India; this historiography is a way of looking at the historical phenomenon through the lens of religion.

http://www.sacw.net/article10998.html

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16. INDIA: PHOTOS OF PROTEST AGAINST THE LAND BILL AT JANTAR MANTAR, 6 APRIL 2015
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http://www.sacw.net/article10997.html

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17. INDIA: ILLEGAL ARREST AND HARASSMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN AT VILLAGE KEVADIA OF NARMADA DISTRICT ON 28TH MARCH 2015 - LETTER TO NHRC
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Women and children in Kevadia village, Gujarat face atrocities by Gujarat state authorities on 28th March 2015. See the letter from Trupti Shah to NHRC

http://www.sacw.net/article10930.html

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18. INDIA: SHANKARBIGHA - A FOREGONE VERDICT | Manoj Mitta
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January 25, 1999: On the eve of Republic Day, at about 8.30pm, an armed mob attacked Shankarbigha, an impoverished Dalit village in Bihar.

http://sacw.net/article10979.html

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19. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
=========================================
available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/

 - On murder of Washiqur Rahman - statement of concern by International Front for Secularism
   http://communalism.blogspot.in/2015/04/on-murder-of-washiqur-rahman-statement.html
 - Grooming women for jihad (Parvathi Menon)
 - Announcement: Discussion on Gujarat Control Terrorism and Organised Crime - GCTOC (9 April 2015, Ahmedabad)
 - India: Sewa Bharti Sangh Parivar'scharitable face; 800 not-for-profits to participate in Delhi / Wipro's Azim Premji Says Attending RSS Event is Not an Endorsement
 - India: Bharatiya Janata Party Minister and MP Giriraj Singh’s comment . . . one more xenophobic attempt to denigrate Sonia Gandhi
 - India: 600 VHP workers detained in violation of prohibitory orders in West Bengal
 - Announcement: Public Meeting on State Violence and the (Im)possibility of Justice: Lessons from Hashimpura (7th April @ Jamila Milia Islamia, Delhi)
 - Vineet Tiwari on a communal incident took place in December end in Indore (M.P.)
 - India: Beef ban just the beginning, Maharashtra government tells Bombay high court
 - Executive Summary of Report on Anti Christian Violence 2014
 - India: Minorities should get their dues
 - India: The ban on cattle slaughter threatens the livelihoods and ways of life (Anand Teltumbde)
 - India: Can marriage deprive women of their religion? Parsi woman asks SC
 - India: SA Aiyar proposes that Hindu religious fervour be harnessed to cleanse Ganga
 - The saffron censorship that governs India: Why national pride and religious sentiment trump freedom of expression | Zareer Masani
 - India: RSS & the web of idol worship (Kancha Ilaiah)
 - Hashimpura: The ugly truth about the state (Governance Now - March 26, 2015)
 - USA: A Hindutva outfit Hindu American Foundation article on History Standard Revision in Virginia
 - India: Christian persecution: fact or fiction?
 - India: Unfreedom director to lodge petition against censor board
 - USA: California appeals court has ruled that yoga taught in San Diego County schools doesn’t violate religious freedom
 - India: Police open fire to quell communal clash in Vadodara (April 4, 2015 11:55)
 - I'm vegan, I work for animal rights and I oppose Maharashtra's beef ban
 - India: Racist Minister Giriraj Singh in Modi's Govt Shows True 'Colours': Only 'Fair' to Sack Him? - NDTV debate 

and More ...
available at: http://communalism.blogspot.in/

::: FULL TEXT :::
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20. NEPAL: ANOTHER LOST DECADE - Editorial, Nepali Times
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(Nepali Times, 3-9 April 2015 #752)

The duration of the post-conflict transition has now lasted nearly as long as the war itself.

This April will mark the ninth anniversary of the People’s Movement that forced King Gyanendra to step aside, restore parliament and bring the Maoist guerrillas down from the mountains into an interim government. How many different ways can we say the same thing? The duration of the post-conflict transition has now lasted nearly as long as the war itself.

No one expected the peace process to be easy. The country was going from monarchy to republic, from war to peace. The inequality, injustice, discrimination and exclusion that were some of the precursors to the insurgency needed to be recognised and resolved through a new, genuinely democratic constitution.

To be sure, some significant achievements were made. Camps housing the Maoists were dismantled, and the guerrillas disarmed and demobilised. Some opted for golden handshakes, others were inducted into the national army. And despite the human and economic cost of the war, it did significantly make hitherto marginalised Nepalis aware of their rights. It forced the ruling class to grudgingly admit that it had for too long monopolised decision-making, neglecting or ignoring other castes and classes, regions and religions. Never before in Nepal’s history, through the Rana years to the Panchayat period, is the collective Nepali consciousness as alert to rights and justice as it is now.

But this has dragged on for too long. Many of us remember the elation of the ceasefire and restoration of democracy in April 2006. The sense of relief and optimism was palpable, finally we had a chance to reap the peace dividend, catch up with the lost decade of development, and address some of the underlying social issues.

That sense of cautious hope was reflected in an editorial in this newspaper titled ‘Freedom at midnight’ which we carried in this space in our 27 April 2006 issue #295.

Here is an urgent checklist: reciprocate the Maoist ceasefire to create the atmosphere for a peace process to start, bring the army effectively under parliamentary control, halt all major purchases of military hardware and helicopters and use freed up funds to kickstart service delivery of health and education to all corners of the country. Before the euphoria evaporates, people need to see immediate proof that democracy this time will mean an improvement in their lives.

Alas, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. The effort to complete the peace process by passing a new constitution and giving the country’s economic development new balance and momentum is faltering. Some of the earlier goals of the revolution for a more inclusive democracy through ‘ethnic liberation’ have turned out to be empty slogans. It’s plain old vote-bank politics masquerading as ethnic and regional autonomy.

Most Nepalis have seen through this, and have the common sense to know that mixing politics with religion and ethnicity can be explosive. They just want state services that work, and they want jobs.

But there are still some in the international community who hold on to the misconception that this is really a struggle for inclusion, identity and autonomy. Nothing could be further from the truth, and we can’t wake up someone who is pretending to sleep. However, both our big neighbours seem to be perfectly aware of the prospect of Nepal becoming unstable and affecting their national interest if we go down the current formula of federalism in the new constitution.

Chairman Dahal got that message loud and clear from the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy. To the South, there is a belated realisation that the handlers and bureaucrats who decided they knew best what was good for the Nepali people and foisted a fatally-flawed federal formula on us were playing with fire. The only question is how to backtrack without losing face, taking identity politics away from hotheads who have built their identity on ethnic politics, while ensuring that whatever comes now is not regressive.

Let us not try to correct past injustices by making an even bigger blunder. And let’s not wait till the tenth anniversary of the ceasefire to take this country forward.

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21. AFGHAN ELECTIONS: ONE YEAR ON AND STILL NO GOVERNMENT
By David Loyn
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(BBC News - 7 April 2015)

Afghanistan still does not have a full government a year after the presidential election.

On 5 April 2014 voters went to the polls in a carnival atmosphere, despite heavy rain. But more than two-thirds of cabinet posts are still unfilled.

The decision by President Ghani to suspend all provincial governors and police chiefs has led to the further stagnation of government across the country.

The reformist governor of Nangarhar province in the east has resigned from the post because he was left without the power he needed to do his job.

Nangarhar is in crucial location, both in terms of security as well as revenue-raising, as it is the gateway to Afghanistan from the Khyber Pass in the east.
'Criminal mafia'

Its provincial capital, Jalalabad, has been facing increasing attacks from the Taliban and other insurgents in recent months.

At a public meeting, a number of elders signed a letter urging the governor, Mullah Ata Ullah Ludin, not to stand down. One said that he was the only person taking on the "criminal mafia".

Mr Ludin's departure leaves this important province leaderless. He finally insisted he had to step down because he could not make the decisions he wanted.

His "acting" status meant he was prevented from appointing new teachers, and an order he gave to close a border weighing station was overturned.

He had made the decision because trucks were constantly leaving far heavier than had been weighed - and must have paid a bribe for the difference.

Apart from the lost revenues, the heavy trucks were damaging the region's roads. He said that if the situation of acting governors and police chiefs was not resolved soon, then the country would "slide towards instability; people will lose faith in the government and corruption will increase".
The election was the third presidential poll since the fall of the Taliban
The continued absence of a full administration is causing frustration within Afghanistan

It's the same story in the province of Herat, the gateway to Iran, at the western end of Afghanistan's most important trade route.

Stagnation here following the suspension from office of most senior officials has provoked the former governor Ismail Khan to actively campaign against President Ghani's government.

Khan was a prominent commander in the jihadi war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. He and other ex-jihadi commanders say they are locked out of government, and are a formidable opposition to the technocratic moderniser who is now president.

But President Ghani is also losing support among those who previously backed him.
Too many chiefs

MPs like Helai Ershad say that far from establishing a reformist government, he has had to make alliances with men she described as "a bunch of mujahidin".

She said that the problems began when the international community persuaded Ghani to share power with Abdullah Abdullah, the opponent he narrowly defeated in a contested election.

Since both men have two deputies, there are six separate powerbases to satisfy in making appointments.

"Two different mentalities, how can they work under the same umbrella?," she asked.

Since there are no political parties in Afghanistan, a country where patronage is the main driver of power, the jockeying for position has gone on.

Ms Ershad believes that only 10 of the more than 20 ministers still to be confirmed by parliament will be approved this time round.

And the issue of appointing substantive provincial governors and police chiefs has still to be addressed.

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22. BANGLADESH: CLIMATE OF INTOLERANCE BREEDING FANATICS
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(The Daily Star - April 05, 2015)
Prof Emeritus Anisuzzaman tells Rukhe Darao Bangladesh discussion
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DU Correspondent

Fanatics are killing people branding them followers of atheism, a belief at present considered a serious offence which contradicts the constitution of 1972, which encompassed socialism, democracy and secularism at a time when people had religious freedom, said Prof Emeritus Anisuzzaman yesterday.

“This can not be the picture of Bangladesh,” he said, adding that in a democracy, hurting religious beliefs and barring freedom of speech was an offence.

The government does not allow opposition parties freedom of expression and to hold rallies while the latter bars people's free movement and their means of making a living, he said, urging the government to be strict in dealing with fundamentalism and militancy.

Prof Anisuzzaman was addressing a discussion of Rukhe Darao Bangladesh, a platform against fundamentalism and militancy, in Dhaka University's RC Majumder Arts Auditorium marking Independence Day.

Ain o Salish Kendra Executive Director Sultana Kamal, one of the platform's conveners, condemned the Awami league for keeping Islam as state religion and the Arabic phrase -- BISMILLAH-AR-RAHMAN-AR-RAHIM -- above the constitution's preamble.

Militants will not spare anyone, even those who patronise them, she said.

Communalism has grown ten-fold compared to the time of East Pakistan, said another convener, cultural personality Ramendu Majumder, adding that the present education policy did not contain teachings on respecting differing beliefs while children addressed classmates as Hindus or Muslims.

Poet Syed Shamsul Huq as the keynote speaker urged BNP to sever ties with Jamaat-e-Islami and join hands with the Awami League and all secular parties to resist Jamaat, militancy and fundamentalism.

He also termed investigations in the recent murders of Avijit Roy and Oyasiqur Rahman “unsatisfactory”.

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23. MUTE BUTTON
by George Packer
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(The New Yorker, April 13, 2015)

One morning last week, as Washiqur Rahman, a shy, boyish-looking twenty-six-year-old Bangladeshi, left his house in Dhaka and started walking to the travel agency where he worked, three men set upon him with machetes and hacked him to death. The blows rendered his face unrecognizable. Two of the killers were captured by a transgender Bangladeshi beggar who lived nearby and handed over to the police. The killers, madrassa students, didn’t know Rahman; they scarcely knew one another. They explained that they had been separately recruited for the job two weeks earlier. Their teacher had said that Rahman was “an anti-Islamic person,” they told the police. “It was our responsibility as believers to kill him. So we killed him.”

They didn’t seem to know what blogging was, and they were not aware that Rahman was a secular blogger who had written critically about radical Islamists. He was part of a small, lively, embattled group of Bangladeshi freethinkers. Shortly before he was murdered, he changed his Facebook picture to the hashtag “#iamavijit.” Avijit Roy, a naturalized American citizen, was an outspoken atheist and the founder of the Bengali blog Free Mind. In February, on his way out of a book fair at Dhaka University, where he had gone to promote his book “The Virus of Faith,” Roy was killed by three machete blows to the head. Trying to save him, his wife, Rafida Ahmed, was wounded in the head, and one of her thumbs was severed, while onlookers and policemen stood by. The killers got away. For months, Roy had been receiving open threats on Facebook from radical Islamists. In recent years, other independent-minded Bangladeshis have been savagely attacked. The government seems unable or unwilling to protect them, and police investigations seldom produce convictions.

There’s nothing remarkable about any of this. Bangladeshis die tragically every day, in political violence and natural or man-made disasters. Citizens everywhere are too frightened or too indifferent to intervene when helpless people are attacked, and governments of all kinds are too corrupt or too craven to render justice. (Perhaps the transgender Bangladeshi was able to act as a human being, rather than as a member of a passive crowd, because she belongs to another ostracized minority.) The deaths of Rahman and Roy would hardly be worth noting, except for the idea that got them killed—one that is indispensable but increasingly endangered around the world.

The value of intellectual freedom is far from self-evident. It’s hardly natural to defend the rights of one person over the feelings of a group; to put up with all the trouble that comes with free minds and free expression; to stand beside the very people who repel you. After the massacre at the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, in January, even defenders of free speech couldn’t help wondering why the cartoonists hadn’t just avoided Islam and the Prophet, given the sensitivities involved. Why be provocative? And when freethinkers are a tiny minority in a terribly poor and overwhelmingly religious country on the other side of the world, with no First Amendment or republican tradition of laïcité, it’s easy to feel that they’re admirable eccentrics who speak for nothing and no one beyond themselves—which may explain why they’ve received so much less attention than their brethren in Paris.

Even in this country, the loathsomeness of an incident in which University of Oklahoma students were caught on video singing a racist song made it seem churlish to argue that their expulsion from a public institution might be unconstitutional. Creating a “hostile environment” is what the Bangladeshi bloggers stood accused of. Hate-speech regulations put actual feelings, often honorable ones, ahead of abstract rights—which seems like common sense. It takes an active effort to resist the impulse to silence the jerks who have wounded you.

In a blog post, Rahman, using gently withering irony, addressed the notion that people like him are the problem, and that if only he would show some restraint things could settle down: “No, I will not write about war crimes, Islamic extremism, the country, or politics anymore. Writing does not change anything anyway; it serves only to appease the rage in my heart. Even then, writing is said to hurt people’s feelings, ruin the ‘peace,’ and impede progress. Therefore I should write only about topics that nobody would take any offense at.” So he set out to write about plants, education, movies, love, and himself—except that each of these inevitably led him into controversies that, he said, would bring down the wrath of the majority. He then asked, “Can someone tell me which topic I should choose to keep the government, the political parties, the Islamists, the general public, the groups in favor and in disfavor of independence, happy? Is there anybody with any ideas?”

Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, argues in his book “The New Censorship” that the explosion of data in digital media keeps us from seeing how extensively information is controlled. “Repression and violence against journalists is at record levels,” he writes, “and press freedom is in decline.” The worst cases include China (which became the world’s top jailer of journalists in 2014), Iran (No. 2), Eritrea, Turkey, and Egypt, but threats and killings are epidemic in the Middle East, South Asia, and Mexico. In Pakistan and elsewhere, blasphemy laws and mob rule make the subject of religion off-limits to all but the very brave. Islamic State-style terrorism has made whole regions lethal for journalists—for the notion of speaking one’s mind.

But, in some ways, an even greater danger than violence or jail is the internal mute button known as self-censorship. Once it’s activated, governments and armed groups don’t have to bother with threats. Here self-censorship is on the rise out of people’s fear of being pilloried on social media. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has been masterful at creating an atmosphere in which there are no clear rules, so that intellectuals and artists stifle themselves in order not to run afoul of vague laws and even vaguer social pressure. A Russian filmmaker, having agreed to remove cursing from her latest movie, assured the Times, “We dubbed it again, and I actually think it became even better.”

In Putin’s Russia, as in Narendra Modi’s India and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, majorities are on the side of silent conformity, and respect for dissent is disappearing under waves of nationalism. In India, books are frequently withdrawn after publication because of dubious legal cases brought on behalf of supposedly aggrieved groups. Last year, to settle a lawsuit, Penguin Books India—part of the world’s largest trade publisher—agreed to recall and pulp the critically acclaimed work “The Hindus: An Alternative History,” by Wendy Doniger. As part of the settlement, Penguin had to affirm that “it respects all religions worldwide”—a nice sentiment that has nothing to do with intellectual freedom.

The problem with free speech is that it’s hard, and self-censorship is the path of least resistance. But, once you learn to keep yourself from voicing unwelcome thoughts, you forget how to think them—how to think freely at all—and ideas perish at conception. Washiqur Rahman and Avijit Roy had more to fear than most of us, but they lived and died as free men. 

George Packer became a staff writer in 2003.

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24. THE RISE AND RISE OF RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN – AND A SLIDE TOWARDS AUTOCRACY IN TURKEY
by Mustafa Coban
=========================================
(The Conversation, 31 March 2015)

Turkey's president is meant to be a non-partisan, ceremonial figure – but Recep Erdogan is openly asking voters to hand him more power.

Mustafa Coban does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Ever since Recep Tayyip Erdogan moved from being prime minister to president of Turkey in 2014, the country’s politics have continued an alarming drift towards autocracy. Erdogan has taken his strong party identity and command-and-control style with him – and is seriously eroding the nation’s checks and balances on personal power.

Turkey’s various presidents have been men of party political and military backgrounds alike. Though it would be naïve to suggest that none of them had any pre-existing political agenda, the record of direct party political manoeuvring is scant.

The previous president, Abdullah Gül was often condemned for his uncritical ratification of legislation passed by parliament, but in general he made an effort to stay above party politics – Gül and Erdogan shared a background in the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP). Gül’s predecessor, former constitutional court judge Ahmet Necdet Sezer, was a firm check on the early years of AKP governments.

But things are different now. The structures that hold back the increasing authority of Erdogan and his party have been under attack for some time – and Erdogan may be on the brink of finally overwhelming them. He is quite openly manouvering to concentrate power in his person rather than the office he holds, and he has been doing so for some time.
Hands on

The Gezi Park demonstrations in May and June 2013, for instance, were sparked in part by his arrogant statements on municipal issues in Istanbul, blithely overriding the governor, mayor and city council.

When a massive corruption scandal broke in December 2013, Erdogan became combative. Wiretaps were released implicating AKP ministers, Erdogan and their sons in wide-scale embezzlement. Erdogan first dismissed the wiretaps as forgeries, then held them up as evidence of a conspiracy.

But ultimately, any “conspiracy” against him clearly failed, as 25 police officers and various others were arrested in raids against those who instituted the wiretaps in the first place.

This was just one of many attempts to reign Erdogan that have failed. After the wiretap scandal, he not only bounced back, but campaigned to great effect in the municipal elections of March 2014, sometimes appearing simultaneously in different places by way of a hologram. And despite the previous year’s upheavals the AKP won a majority across the country.

Erdogan appears in hologram form in 2014.

Neither Erdogan’s overreach nor evidence of corruption moved the electorate against the AKP. The verdict seemed to be “they steal, but they work hard,” in contrast to previous more secular-minded governments which were also accused of corruption, but were not seen to be working for the good of the country.

And while the AKP certainly benefited from heavily favourable coverage by the state broadcaster TRT, the charisma and personal power of Erdogan himself was also a major factor. Any attack on Erdogan simply seems to galvanise his supporters behind him.
Rallying the troops

Now Erdogan is president, not prime minister, he is meant to be on a much tighter leash. Article 101 of the Turkish constitution makes it explicit that the president must sever all connections with their party. But Erdogan is not just flouting this core requirement; he is openly campaigning for his party in the run-up to the 2015 general election.

So far, Erdogan has already addressed voters in a number of cities, including Denizli, Gaziantep, and most recently the capital Ankara.

Erdogan has also been giving a series of lectures to “muhtars“, village and neighbourhood officials who are elected but not affiliated with political parties. Since these officials have local influence and a role in registering voters, recruiting them to a party political agenda is also against the law.

Most shockingly of all, Erdogan has actually started asking the electorate to return 400 MPs for the AKP, which would provide the AKP government with the majority it needs to unilaterally amend the constitution. For the president to make this plea at all is illegal.

Regardless of what happens in the election, substantial damage has already been done. The previously ceremonial chair of the presidency is rapidly being turned into a powerful executive post, drawing influence and authority from a Parliament subservient to the person rather than the institution.

Little stands in Erdogan’s way. He chose his successor as PM, Ahmet Davutoğlu, precisely for his malleability, and Turkey’s moves towards a police state bear Erdogan’s fingerprints.

It is not inconceivable that if they were elected, 400 AKP members of parliament (out of a total of 550) under the de facto leadership of Erdogan could vote to rewrite the constitution and overnight make his currently illegal electioneering legal – and along with it, his radical effort to gather ever more unaccountable power for himself.

Author
PhD Candidate, Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at University of Birmingham

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South Asia Citizens Wire
Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. Newsletter of South Asia Citizens Web: 
www.sacw.net/

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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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