Publicly humiliated Bangladesh teacher now threatened with death on Facebook

Death threats have been made on Facebook against a Hindu schoolteacher who was recently assaulted and shamed on the flimsy grounds of blasphemy.

Security agencies are investigating the threat hurled at Narayanganj’s Shyamal Kanti Bhakta, said Industries Minister Amir Hossain Amu on Sunday.

Head of the Cabinet committee on law and order, he was speaking to reporters after a meeting of the committee at the home ministry.

“Anyone can make a threat, it’s not an issue. But we’re active,” said the senior Awami League leader.

There was no evidence to suggest that Bhakta, head teacher of Piyar Sattar Latif School at Bandar Upazila, had made inflammable comments on religion, Amu said.

An event on a Facebook page, with a name that translates to ‘Death is punishment for insulting Islam’s Prophet’, has called on Muslims to hack the teacher to death, a style used by machete-wielding attackers from a series of murders of secular thinkers and religious minorities.   

The event which called for Bhakta’s murder using machetes has been dated May 31.

A May 19 post on the event’s wall said the teacher’s ‘crime had been proved’. “Al Qaeda’s mujhideens are aware of it and they are watching the situation. But we want along with al Qaeda’s mujhideens general Muslims come forth and kill those maligning Islam and Allah.”

Another post on a different page, with a name that translates to ‘Salahuddin’s Horse’, on Saturday also called for killing Bhakta at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, where he is currently receiving treatment.

On May 13, Bhakta was beaten by a mob and made to do sit-ups holding his ears by local MP AKM Salim Osman for allegedly insulting Islam.

The incident sparked a storm of nationwide protests and the school’s managing committee, which had sacked the Hindu teacher afterwards, was dissolved by the government.

Bhakta was reinstated, while Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said a government inquiry had not found any truth in the allegations levelled against the teacher.