The Bangladesh government has finally started to crack down on militants and those who have been targeting minorities and secular writers in the country. For a few
years now, the regularity at which bloggers and other writers who were exposing militant groups and flawed policies through their work, as well as minorities such as Hindus and
Catholics were being killed was alarming. Now the Shaikh Hasina led government has arrested over 3000 people, with around 37 of them militants belonging to an outlawed group called the Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). With a large amount of militant Islamic groups, the country needed the government to step up and take control of the
situation. Prime Minister Hasina put together the paramilitary
border guards and an elite anti-crime force. She has promised
to bring more people to book. This was needed, not just to
bring order in the country and assure the minorities and writers
that they were safe, but also from an international perspective.
With many other countries self-imploding due to unrest,
particularly of the communal kind, the crackdown was a great
show of strength. Of course, political rivals claim that this was
a move to suppress political dissent. How far that is true is
anyone’s guess.
