Month: January 2019

Durba’s Escape: Secular Rescue Story

Secular Rescue is a program of the Center for Inquiry that identifies those writers, activists, and everyday citizens in countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iraq who live under the threat of violence and death and provides financial and diplomatic assistance to help these them escape to safety. A woman going by the name of Durba Zahan has been at the epicenter of the crisis from before the time of the Center for Inquiry’s direct involvement with the threats to secularists and free expression in Bangladesh. A student of art and history, Durba was familiar with the work of the secularist bloggers and activists that had been hacked to death or gunned down for their outspoken criticism of religious extremism. In 2013, hardline religious political parties cast women bloggers as threats to the state. “They tagged us as being whores, that we did not belong to good families and we should be raped and killed,” Durba told us. That same year, fellow atheist blogger Rajib Haidar was hacked to death. It would be the first …