Legal framework on freedom of religion and actual application
The constitutional status of religious freedom in Bangladesh is highly ambivalent and even paradoxical. On the one hand, the constitution states that “[s]ubject to law, public order and morality, every citizen has the right to profess, practice, or propagate all religions” (Article 41, 1, a). On the other hand, the same document simultaneously makes Islam the state religion while also explicitly recognising “secularism” as a basic constitutional principle.
Specifically, the Preamble and Article 8 respectively define secularism as a high ideal and a “fundamental principle(s) of state policy.” Article 12 — suspended in the past, but restored in June 2011 under the 15th Amendment — further stipulates: “The principle of secularism shall be realised by the elimination of: (a) communalism in all its forms; (b) the granting by the state of political status in favour of any religion; (c) the abuse of religion for political purposes; (d) any discrimination against, or persecution of, persons practicing a particular religion.” At the same time, Article 2A states that “[t]he state religion of the Republic is Islam,” adding the proviso that “the State shall ensure equal status and equal rights in the practice of the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and other religions.”
This paradox persists. On 28 March 2016, the High Court of Justice of Bangladesh upheld the status of Islam as the state religion. With the country torn by religious tensions and a growing Islamism, the judges nonetheless upheld the prominent place of Islam in the constitutional order.
Bangladesh broke free from Pakistan in 1971 and ever since then has wrestled with the question of its fundamental identity. Today the country is in a more ambivalent and conflicted position than any time since independence. Officially, secularism is promoted and imposed from the top down by the ruling Awami League, but at a societal level, a strong current of militant Islamism continues to generate significant hostility against religious minorities.
While Sunni Islam occupies a major place in the country’s sense of self, many Bangladeshis are also proud of its tolerant and moderate traditions. In 1972, Bangladesh adopted a constitution based on a linguistic and secular identity. In 1988 however, a military regime led by General Hussein Muhammad Ershad changed the constitution to make Islam the state religion. Since then, a powerful political and intellectual movement has sought to strengthen secularism, while an opposing movement has promoted Islamisation.
The conflict over the country’s identity has thus given birth to two sharply opposed ideological factions: “secularists” and “Islamists.” For historian Samuel Berthet, “[r]elations between religion and state are pivotal in the history of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, but also in the history of the project of the Bangladeshi nation since its creation in 1971”. Bangladesh was originally East Pakistan before it broke away from West Pakistan in 1971 during a violent war of liberation. Estimates of the loss of life caused by the war range widely from 300,000 to three million. West Pakistani forces joined with Islamists inside East Pakistan to defend an Islamic conception of the nation and crush the secessionists, without success. “At the time of Bangladesh’s creation,” Berthet explains, “the reference to religion was thus associated with Pakistani trusteeship, while secularism was associated with the project of the Bangladeshi nation.”
Bangladesh is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Incidents and developments
Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh does not have an anti-blasphemy law. However, the colonial-era Penal Code of 1860 (Articles 295A and 298) criminalises the offence of wounding or “outraging the religious feelings” of others. Furthermore, Bangladesh passed an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act in 2006, further toughened by the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2013, under which it is illegal to publish content on the Internet that could “harm public order and the law” or be construed as defamation against religions. This law has been used to imprison journalists, students, and teachers.
In addition to the ICT Act, the Bangladeshi government enacted the Digital Security Act (DSA) in October 2018, giving the police the power to detain individuals, including journalists, without a warrant. Human rights activists argue that the law’s vagueness gives the government “a license for wide-ranging suppression of critical voices.” “An average of 147 people were sued and 67 arrested under the Digital Security Act in each of the 11 months preceding February 2022, according to a report by the Centre for Governance Studies” Those targeted were mainly activists, journalists, and others critical of the government.
The conflict between secularists and Islamists continues unabated, with ambivalent consequences for religious freedom at the political level of official laws and policies, as well as at the non-state or societal level. Secularists associated with the ruling Awami League (AL) political party, led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, have often opposed militant Islamism in an aggressive and uncompromising fashion since they assumed leadership of the government in 2009. For example, On 28 July 2022, the AL-led government prosecuted leaders of an Islamist political party, the Bangladeshi Razakar Bahini group, for committing crimes against humanity in collaboration with the Pakistani government during the 1971 war. Additionally, on 17 August 2022, a tribunal sentenced five militants from the Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JNB) group to death for a 2015 bomb attack on a mosque in Chattogram.
Generally, the Awami League government has sought to curb Islamist influences in society and politics, which in theory increases the security of religious minorities as well as social and civic space for religious freedom. However, secularist policies themselves have also often violated religious freedom and other civil liberties, and it is arguable that the very intransigence of these policies has helped fuel social and political polarisation as well as what appears to be an intensifying Islamist backlash. The government’s prosecution of Islamist leaders for war crimes, for example, has drawn criticism from international observers for failing to protect the rights of defendants, as well as provoked intense domestic hostility from religious conservatives and opponents of the Awami League.
Striking back at these efforts by the Awami League, Islamist militants have initiated a massive campaign of violent attacks targeting secular bloggers, human rights activists, as well as religious minorities, particularly Hindus and Christians. While this campaign has ebbed and flowed over the last decade, it has seen an increase in viciousness and intensity in the last two years.
The period under review saw a dramatic spike in violence against religious minorities. The most significant occurred in mid-October 2021, after a Facebook post from the Comilla district which alleged that the Quran had been desecrated at a Hindu Durga Puja festival site. This triggered a series of attacks on “more than 100 Hindu temples, festival sites, shops and homes” throughout the country. Although the government arrested more than 400 people and multiple cases were filed, the attacks are said to have caused ripple effects reaching all the way to India, where those in favour of India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act cited them as justification for the law. Another incident occurred on 17 July 2022, when several homes, shops, and a temple in Sahapara village in Narail district were vandalised over a Facebook post offensive to Islam.
Christians also fear for their safety as they reported an increase in violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) community. Numerous arson attacks and the killing of some 22 members of ethnic minority groups in the last year have left many residents unsettled and worried about the future. “We are the locals, but today we do not have any security, neither at home nor outside,” stated one local Catholic resident. “Often, we do not know who is killing whom, when and why. The CHT has become a turbulent place.”
On 17 August 2022, several civil society organizations protested against the government for its decision to block the UN High Commissioner for Human rights, Michelle Bachelet, from visiting the CHT region. They claimed that the government deliberately sought to hide violations against the indigenous residents of the area. During a press conference after her visit, Ms. Bachelet stated that religious minorities still face significant human rights abuses despite implementation of the 1997 Chittagong Hills Tracts (CHT) accord.
In a densely populated country where land ownership is highly prized, many NGOs report that ethnic and religious minorities are highly vulnerable to land grabbing. For example, in the Ghoraghat area of Dinajpur District in northern Bangladesh, Catholic members of the indigenous Santal ethnic group have struggled during the reporting period. On 24 August 2022, members of the group formed a human chain to protest land grabbing by a ruling party lawmaker. They claimed that the accused grabbed a total of 86 acres of land belonging to locals.
Even as Bangladeshi authorities deserve recognition for providing a safe haven for the nearly one million mostly Muslim Rohingya refugees who have fled neighbouring Myanmar since August 2017, it is becoming increasingly clear that their situation is difficult and untenable. One source of their difficulties is violence by Islamic militants. Between May and August 2022, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) appears to have been responsible for the deaths of at least five people, with the most recent attack, on 10 August, resulting in the death of two Rohingya community leaders in a refugee camp. Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, expressed her impatience with the refugee crisis stating that the Rohingya refugees must return back to Myanmar, a sentiment clearly shared by many refugees themselves. On 25 August 2022, thousands of refugees carrying placards reading “Hope is Home,” organized rallies in order to express their desperation to return to their homeland.
Prospects for freedom of religion
Islamism has been the greatest source of violent religious persecution in the country for more than twenty years, and the current reporting period witnessed a dramatic surge in Islamist violence against religious minorities.
Additionally, the dysfunctional politics in which Bangladesh has been trapped for decades renders any progress towards religious freedom and a healthy secularity insecure and unsustainable. As recently as August 2022, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised to support secularism and decisively address any efforts to weaken it. Yet a truly free and open Bangladesh that respects the religious liberty of all of its citizens will remain elusive without greater understanding and trust between the country’s more secular and more religiously conservative communities. The prospects for religious freedom remain negative.
Bangladesh