The Curious Case of an Anti-377 Fundraiser in Bangladesh

This article was first published in Medium.

In the Bangladeshi LGBT+ social media space, a mysterious Facebook ID is promising to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against Article 377 of the Bangladeshi constitution. The perfunctory effort exhibits warning signs of a scam and can be traced back to one “Mohammad Kafi” who posted on August 24, 2019 that the PIL will be filed within the first week of September 2019. But there’s a caveat, the profile explained. The initiators announced that they will personally spend 10 lakh BDT towards the petition filing, but will need more money. The profile then urged supporters to get in touch and send money via email. Another UK-based gay individual, Riaz Osmani, appears to be publicly backing and spreading Mohammad Kafi’s announcement.

In the last few days, multiple versions of the story circulated in several gay groups in Bangladesh. In some of these stories, the initiator is a UK citizen of Bangladeshi origin. Some of the stories go further to say that with the help of several Bangladesh-based lawyers, he will file the PIL in Bangladesh and immediately leave the country for the UK. LGBT+ community responses to the story are mixed. Some concluded, “this will fail, of course.” Others expressed either their explicit support or tacit nod, “let’s see what happens.” There are three issues at play here: a visible pattern of UK-based suspicious activities couched in the rhetoric of LGBT+ rights in Bangladesh, the lack of local queer community’s political engagement, and the Bangladesh-specific debate around Article 377.

First, in the past years we have witnessed a series of suspicious activities originating in the UK and ostensibly promoting LGBT+ rights in Bangladesh, particularly since the murders of Xulhaz and Tonoy. We came across the screenshots of at least two issues of magazine editorials claiming to be Roopbaan. However, Roopbaan magazine ceased its publication after the second issue and Roopbaan as an organization is continuing. In an attempt to steal Roopbaan’s organizational identity, certain individuals were spreading rumors about a Roopbaan handover to new organizers and lying about their association with Roopbaan. We heard reports of Bangladeshi-origin lawyers in the UK taking bribes for inauthentic asylum cases. Although these reports need verifying, they should be taken seriously as they complicate matters for queer people seeking asylum. Gay-identifying individuals were reported to organize public events and give TV interviews as Bangladeshi gay victims. But folks in the Bangladeshi queer scene could not identify them. We do not believe in policing people’s expressions but we believe the pattern of Bangladesh-centered and UK-based LGBT+ rights activities require a cautioned approach. Riaz Osmani, to mention one recurring name, was reported to be associated with some of these activities. The extent of Osmani’s association requires further verification as well.

The person organizing the email-based fundraiser is unidentified. Community members received emotionally manipulative personal messages from “Mohammad Kafi,” such as, “8 barristers are willing to fight the case if they get the money. It is a matter of money. I am getting huge response. I am doing everything openly. I am not afraid of death. If you send me BDT 100000 today. I shall file the petition tomorrow.” Riaz Osmani is backing and spreading the current anti-377 campaign as well. The unidentified profile also circulated names of three specific Bangladeshi lawyers who will file the PIL. We spoke to our allied Bangladeshi lawyers and they expressed disbelief that the listed lawyers would take on such a case.

Second, not for the first time this year someone is launching an effort to liberate us without engaging and consulting active organizations and collectives in Bangladesh. The presence of Article 377 and the absence of a pride march don’t mean we lack agency and simply need saving. Cultural publications, photography projects, short movie production, online meetings and groups, fairs and exhibitions, parties, dinners, dates, music and dance events, queer iftars and pujas, hookups, gatherings in public space, co-living, coming out to families, informal engagements and weddings are all part of our current lives in Bangladesh. For instance, Roopbaan runs a queer blog, along with some completed and potential projects. Other groups organized an art fair and a social justice exhibition. A queer archival project is coming up. Nadira Khanom, a self-identified hijra woman, ran for a parliamentarian position and community members raised funds and backed her candidacy. Community members also put their faces and stories in Elska, a US-based gay magazine. None of this is to say we are living in a queer utopia or that Article 377 is tolerable. What we want to stress is that, alongside state and vigilante violence against gender and sexual minority communities, there is an active scene where queer people are expressing their desires and making life happen, and that social landscape has to be engaged before launching political campaigns. Anti-377 efforts that don’t seriously engage the political status quo of queer lives in Bangladesh are doomed to fail or worse, put local queer lives in danger.

Finally, the oppressive history of the colonial 377 in South Asia is now well covered. The Bangladeshi LGBT+ community’s aspiration to strike down 377 is deeply rooted in these histories. We don’t want to belabor the point that dealing with 377 will not uplift all queers equally, an issue Aniruddha Dutta elaborated in India’s context. We do not see anti-377 activism to be entirely futile though. Anti-377 activism has been present in Bangladeshi LGBT+ organizing since as far back as we can remember. However, contexts change and we need to craft political strategies based on present reality and not fixed obsessions. To broaden the debate around Bangladesh-specific complexity of Article 377, we share the following notes.

Public Interest Litigations are complicated processes. Nogorbalok covered the technicalities of the PIL in an urgently written piece. Reflecting on two recent examples — one on the relocation of Lady Justice statue and another on the writ against Islam as state religion — Nogorbalok pointed out that the confluence of current partisan politics and religious activism severely limits the window of anti-377 petitioning. We must also keep in mind that in practice male rape cases would fall under Article 377 in Bangladesh.

For the Bangladeshi LGBT+ community, what’s lacking first and foremost is social legitimacy. Consider the fact that Article 377 applies equally to straight people, yet it has never been their headache. As LGBT+ people, we lack social recognition among our families, relatives, neighbors, friends, and colleagues. It was this understanding of our social context that drove the shift among queer organizers, such as Roopbaan, who between 2013–2016 deprioritized Article 377 and instead produced queer cultural expressions through publications, performances, rallies, events and reached out to the broader society. The ongoing cultural organizing among many other local collectives is also rooted in this lived experience.

Among the UK-based social movement predators, who reportedly manipulate vulnerable queer community members in Bangladesh, anti-377 activism and pride marches in Dhaka’s streets have become the all-encompassing solution to our complex lives under state violence and social illegitimacy. The suspicious actors are further spurred on by disempowered segments of local queer community which believe liberation will come from outside and above. The UK-based provocateur voices have so little at stake and are so disconnected that they don’t even stop to consider that our authoritarian state machinery, when pushed, is all too capable of dragging out and ruining the lives of those who fight to live here day in, day out. One friend shared last night, “I am so afraid now. I have written in some blogs and am visible in the community. I mean, once this PIL is in the news, if they arrest just one of us and push him to reveal some of our identities, what’s going to happen?” Even if Article 377 were struck down tomorrow, we will be far away from widespread social acceptance and under greater threat of violence with no state protection.

What can we do now? For the immediate moment, the two of us refuse to be preyed upon by social movement predators and scammers. On the organizing front, we believe that we need to build a more active political culture within our own communities. We have to find creative ways to discuss and grapple with our honest experiences. We have to craft projects of solidarity among our own disconnected groups and with other movements across the fragmented progressive political scene in Bangladesh. We have to innovate and foster grounded approaches to LGBT+ activism. If your ear is close to the ground, you know there are several examples of these in Bangladesh. Our liberation will be a multipronged struggle with nuanced deliberations, committed organizing, and community participation. It won’t come with out of the blue fundraisers, campaigns, scams, and master plans laid out on a kitchen table thousands of miles away and backed by people who silently nod and agree to sit it out and be saved.

I. Sayed is a queer poet and writer from the Bengal delta. Rasel A. is a community-based filmmaker, queer archivist, and exiled founding editor of Roopbaan magazine.