Human rights activists denounce homophobic Bangladeshi newspaper
Daily Sangram newspaper is a mouthpiece for an Islamic opposition political party
Human rights activists are pleading with a nationally distributed newspaper in Bangladesh to put an end to its continual homophobic pronouncements.
The human rights advocacy group JusticeMakers Bangladesh and its France-based affiliate have called on the Daily Sangram newspaper to apologize to the LGBTQ community and to stop spreading misinformation about homosexuality.
The newspaper, which is supported by the conservative Islamist political party Jamaat E Islami Bangladesh, has claimed that students throughout Bangladesh are developing “homosexual inclinations”, that some nations are at risk of destruction because of homosexuality, and that homosexuals are mentally disordered and spread incurable diseases.
The Daily Sangram has often been at odds with the government of Bangladesh. Its editor, Abul Asad, was arrested in 2019 after the newspaper described Abdul Quader Molla as a “martyr”. Molla was a former Jamaat official and Daily Sangram executive editor who was executed in 2013 for massacring unarmed civilians as a militia leader during the Bangladesh war of liberation in 1971.
The international Committee to Protect Journalist called for the government to release Asad and reporter Ruhul Amin Gazi, who both were accused of sedition in connection with the declaration of Molla’s martyrdom. Asad was released on bail in late 2020; Gazi was released in March 2022.
Human rights lawyer/activist Shahanur Islam, the founder/president of JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France, said the homophobic statements in the Daily Sangram have put the lives of LGBTQ Bangladeshis “increasingly at risk”.
In a public appeal, JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France stated:
Paris, France: September 9, 2023 – The France-based human rights organization JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF) has expressed its profound dismay and concern over the negative portrayal of Bangladeshi homosexuals in the Daily Sangram newspaper, published in Dhaka.
The human rights organization calls upon the newspaper to issue an immediate apology for disseminating negative content regarding homosexuals and urges it to refrain from spreading further misinformation about homosexuality.
On June 24, 2023, the Bangla Jatiya newspaper, Dainik Sangram, published a report titled “The Increasing Prevalence of Homosexuality in Khulna,” wherein it was stated that students in a majority of schools, colleges, and madrasahs were developing homosexual inclinations, leading to the creation of a distorted mindset. According to a leader of the Islamic youth movement, homosexuality is unequivocally abhorrent and the most reprehensible act in the world. The report also claimed that several nations had faced destruction due to homosexuality. Furthermore, the report asserted that homosexuality poses severe health risks, including the transmission of incurable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, as stated by a doctor from Khulna Medical College Hospital who characterized homosexuality as a manifestation of a complete mental disorder.
Advocate Shahanur Islam, the founder president of JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF) and a prominent human rights lawyer, has expressed strong indignation and protest against the publication of negative reports on homosexuality based on inaccurate and distorted information in a national newspaper like Dainik Sangram. He believes that Dainik Sangram’s publication of this report constitutes a deliberate attack on gay rights.
Advocate Shahanur Islam stated that in Bangladesh, where homosexuals still cannot openly express their identity, they continue to face discrimination in all aspects of life, including physical and mental violence, and even murder. Their lives are increasingly at risk due to such publications.
While the developed world, including the World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association, is striving to ensure the rights of homosexuals as a recognized sexual orientation, homosexuality is unjustly portrayed in Bangladesh as a depraved mentality, utterly despicable, and the worst possible act on earth. Misrepresentations like these have purportedly led to the destruction of several nations, including the spread of HIV/AIDS. Advocate Shahanur Islam apprehends that Bangladeshi citizens are being incited against homosexuals by the dissemination of reports containing inaccurate and distorted information about incurable diseases.
JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF) calls for the immediate enactment and implementation of the Sexual Minority Protection Act by repealing Section 377 of the Penal Code to protect homosexuals, as sexual diversity is a natural and inherent biological aspect.
Homosexuality has always been African, but the term LGBT is new and divisive