A personal story: How my family got entangled in Bangladesh’s turmoil

Before fleeing Bangladesh, I went to my hometown of Sylhet to bid my parents goodbye. 

“I won’t see you again, son,” my elderly father Shafique Ahmed, a retired tea planter, said. “I won’t live until Bangladesh becomes ready for your return. … So this is the last time we are seeing each other. Go and live your life.”

I never saw him again.

I am the second of my parents’ seven children. I couldn’t attend the funeral of my father, who died four years after I left. He inspired me and, without hesitation, was always there for us, his children.  

“Choosing a path is your choice. My job is to be with my children. Wherever you go, I am there,” my father used to say.

No one ever saw my dad practice any religion, nor did he like to talk about the subject. My mother Monowara Boro Bhuiyan, on the other hand, is a pious Muslim, and we seven siblings are all different – ranging from an atheist like me to a 100% practicing Muslim brother. 

In Bangladesh, it’s nearly impossible to get married outside of religious norms. Even a marriage registration in court requires religious references. 

To remain free from religion, when Dina Ferdous and I got married in October 2009, we signed a general legal agreement drafted by a lawyer friend. My father was a witness to our union. 

When one of my sisters married a Christian in a church, and my pious Muslim brother arranged a prayer after he got married at a mosque, my dad was there for them too. No matter the occasion, he was there by his children’s side. 

Our family is just like that, a vibrant, liberal family with different views and paths. But we have suffered in one way or another in a country where Islam is the state religion.

Under Awami League rule (2009-2024), an online security act made criticizing religion a non-bailable offense. And, starting in 2013, Islamic fundamentalists began attacking and killing secular bloggers, writers, and publishers for allegedly hurting religious sentiment. The parade of killings finally ended in 2016. 

After a student-led protest movement toppled Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024, attacks, harassment, and intimidation through lawsuits have proliferated. Thousands of people have been targeted, and siblings and in-laws of mine are among them. 

“I used to think, once my children grew up, my sufferings would go away,” my widowed mother, now 75 and staying in New York, told me. 

“But after raising seven children in a row, I never imagined that I would have to spend my life watching them run from fear and panic.” 

‘A death to me too’

The misery in our family started with me, a nonbeliever. 

One of the focuses of my writing and blogging was to criticize the incompatibility of religions in modern society. I had been with Shuddhashar, a Bangladeshi publishing house specializing in secular books, since its inception in 2004. 

Many of the secular writers who were murdered and attacked by fundamentalists in Bangladesh were my personal friends.

On Feb. 26, 2015, at the annual Ekushey Book Fair in Dhaka, Shuddhashar launched the first edition of “Roopban,” a literary magazine authored by LGBT writers. 

Along with many others, the Bangladeshi-American science writer Avijit Roy and his wife Rafida Bonya Ahmed joined me at the launch. As the couple were leaving the fair that night, religious extremists attacked them with machetes. They hacked Avijit to death and seriously injured Bonya.  

Upon hearing the news, my wife Dina sobbed out loud. Avijit was also close to her. When our 2-year-old daughter saw her mother crying, she started crying too. 

I could neither cry nor scream. I saw my friend Avijit’s death, and the manner in which he died, as the death of my soul.

As the killings continued, many secular writers began to panic. 

Influential politicians from the government started blaming the slain bloggers and writers for their deaths, suggesting that those were consequences for their words having “hurt” religious sentiment. 

Even Prime Minister Hasina made it clear she would not tolerate defamation of religion. With the government’s moral support, the fundamentalists started openly threatening secular writers. 

As a result, spaces for speaking and writing freely became squeezed, and our secular community almost stopped publishing any new writings. 

Family and friends advised me to leave the country, but I was reluctant to go. 

Then, in October 2015, extremists attacked Shuddhashar, our publishing house. I happened to not be at the office that day, Oct. 31, when two writers along with publisher and editor Ahmedur Rashid Tutul were injured.

When I went to visit Tutul at the hospital, I learned that at around the same time and on the same day, another Dhaka publishing house, Jagriti, was also attacked and its publisher, Faisal Arefin Dipan, was murdered in cold blood. 

The next day, Tutul sent me a message from his hospital bed: “Try to leave the country as soon as possible.” 

It was my wife and daughter who convinced me we should leave the country.

Dina had lost her father in childhood. 

“I know how much of a struggle it is for a girl to grow up without a father in Bangladesh,” she told me. “I don’t want my daughter to be fatherless. We can’t stay in the country anymore.” 

I didn’t answer, but I knew then that we had to leave. In despair, I asked my daughter Prantee, who had just learned to talk, “Do you understand the pain of the soul?”

“No,” my 2-year-old replied without hesitation.

We left everything behind and landed in New York City in mid-December.

In our safe haven in Queens, we weren’t entirely insulated from threats. Dina, who writes about women’s rights issues, became a victim of online attacks. 

Nevertheless, we thought that our relatives in Bangladesh would remain safe because they didn’t criticize religion. 

But after the political change in August 2024, we realized we were wrong.

Siblings’ lives upended

In the wake of the government’s collapse in August, one of my brothers, who is an Awami League (AL) politician, lives in fear of being arrested, or attacked by opponents of the ex-ruling party. Another brother, the oldest of my siblings – also an Awami supporter – is in a similar situation.  

Both brothers were born and raised in Sylhet. They spent their entire lives in that small town, where everybody knows everybody. 

Nazmul Alam Romen, my politician-brother, is the general secretary of the Sylhet city committee of the Jatiya Sramik League, the trade union wing of AL. 

He was a candidate in the January 2024 parliamentary elections, though he did not secure his party’s nomination to contest the seat. He traveled to the U.S. last March to see our mother and has been here since.

After Hasina fell from power on Aug. 5, groups of unknown people repeatedly knocked on the door of Romen’s home, looking for him. 

He and many other Awami officials have been leveled with dozens of charges tying them to alleged murder and possession of explosives, stemming from the killings of hundreds of anti-Hasina protesters in July and August. Romen denies the accusations, and I have no doubt that he is innocent.

“I thought I would go back home in a few months and prepare for the next election. But if I go now, I will either be attacked or end up in jail,” Romen told me from New York. 

“I don’t know what will happen to my two children. I can neither go to them, nor bring them to me,” said Romen, the father of two small children. 

They and their mother are on the run in Bangladesh for their safety.

My elder brother, Shamsul Alam Salim, is a writer, lyricist, and cultural organizer. Currently, he is the Sylhet district president of the Sommilito Sangskritik Jote, the largest progressive cultural alliance in Bangladesh. 

In early August, Salim went into hiding when a group of unknown people went looking for him at his house. 

After two months, he thought he could return home but then learned that on Oct. 27, he had been charged along with the Sylhet City Mayor Anwaruzzaman Chowdhury of possessing explosives and using them to attack protesters in July.

“I’ve lived with people my whole life, now I’ve been living alone for more than six months. No social media, no phone, completely alone. If I live like this for too long, I think I’ll go crazy,” my brother said.

Since the interim government took office, acts of intimidation have also taken place in the cultural sphere. 

In Dhaka, I used to be associated with a theater group, Desh Natak. On Nov. 2, during a performance by Desh Natak at a government-run auditorium in Dhaka, a group of people demanded that a member of the troupe be handed over to them because of his affiliation with the Awami League.

When Desh Natak officials refused, the mob threatened to set fire to the theater. The theater’s management stopped the performance midway.

Among my seven siblings, two others have also been adversely affected by the fallout after Hasina’s exit from Bangladesh. 

During his student life, my brother Muhammad Polen was active in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the Awami League’s bitter foe. By profession, he was the head of marketing at S. Alam Cement. It was shut down after the Awami League government fell because of allegations that its owner had close ties to former Prime Minister Hasina and was linked with money laundering.

“Nobody fired us, nobody is there to pay us. Factories are closed, and bank accounts are frozen. No production, no sale, no salary. This is our situation,” Polen  told me from Chattogram, in southeastern Bangladesh.

“Companies stopped hiring, everyone is trying to understand the new government. I don’t know how to explain this crisis to my three daughters,” said my brother, the father of three girls.

‘I am afraid’

My sister Romana Kiron, the third child of my parents, is married to a Protestant man. Although Kiron doesn’t care about religion, her husband, Onisimus Chowdhury (whom we know as “Oni”) is a practicing Christian and currently the treasurer of a church in Sunamganj. 

“I am the minority of the minorities. After August 5th, local Hindus grabbed a part of my family cemetery and incorporated it into their crematorium,” Oni said.

Oni recounted another problem he recently had while trying to sell a plot of land. The buyer paid him a security deposit of  200,000 taka (U.S. $1,640), but then a local BNP supporter, who is Muslim, forced Oni to give him the money.

“[N]obody attacked or directly threatened me, but I am afraid. It’s not that I was fearless before, but in the past, I knew where to get help – I could call the police,” he told me. “Now I don’t know where to find support. Of course, there are police stations, but no police for ordinary people like me.”

Every year, Oni celebrates Christmas by decorating his house with lights and inviting many friends and relatives. But last Christmas, he didn’t host any parties.

“I just prayed during this Christmas. I didn’t light the house or invite anyone to my place. I didn’t feel safe,” Oni said.

“There is no one to look after my elderly mother except me. I can neither go anywhere, nor I can move with her anywhere. So, I have nothing to do but wait for misfortune – if any comes.”

As for me, I came to the United States seeking asylum after being threatened in my country for practicing freedom of thought. My application is still pending.

If it is rejected, I won’t have any right to stay here. I have a birthright to be in Bangladesh, but my country has become a difficult place to live for my family members who don’t even criticize religion.

So I am left to wonder, will there ever come a day when we seven siblings can all be reunited to take a group photo again at our home in Bangladesh? 

Most probably never.