Facebook suspends Taslima Nasreen citing 'hate speech'; Bangladeshi author hits back

Facebook has banned the account of renowned Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen for seven days due to her alleged "hate speech" post. Nasreen, who always hit the headlines due to her controversial and bold statements, took to the microblogging site and said that her account has been suspended for seven days for "telling the truth". 

"Facebook banned me again for 7 days for telling the truth," the author wrote on Twitter. "Facebook has banned me for writing '' Islamists destroyed Bangladeshi Hindu houses & temples believing that Hindus placed Quran on Hanuman's thigh. But when it was revealed that Iqbal Hossain did that, not the Hindus, Islamists were silent, said and did nothing against Iqbal," she tweeted on Monday.

Further, the Bangladeshi author claimed that this was not the first time that she has been barred from accessing her social media account. On March 16 this year, Nasreen said she was barred from the social media giant for 24 hours. "#Facebook banned me for 24 hrs. My crime was I liked the decision of Aarong, a Bangladeshi handicrafts store, for not hiring a Jihadi who refused to follow the rules of Aarong, to shave off his beard to work as a salesman. Islamists have been protesting against Aarong," she had tweeted.

She recounted that her Facebook account was earlier disabled in 2015 as well. Apart from banning her social media accounts, her book was also banned by the Bangladeshi government.

"Governments ban my books, jihadists burn my books and threat booksellers not to sell my books. I've got only one platform to express my views in Bengali, that is #fb. But whenever I use my freedom to write on fb freely for my readers, fb bans me. No free speech for freethinkers," she said in another tweet.

According to Facebook's norms, an account will be banned if anybody breaches its "hate speech" policy.

Know all about Facebook "hate speech policy"

"We define hate speech as a direct attack against people - rather than concepts or institutions - on the basis of what we call protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease. We define attacks as violent or dehumanising speech, harmful stereotypes, statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt, disgust or dismissal, cursing and calls for exclusion or segregation," the Facebook policy said.

"We also prohibit the use of harmful stereotypes, which we define as dehumanising comparisons that have historically been used to attack, intimidate or exclude specific groups, and that are often linked with offline violence," it added. 

Nasreen left Bangladesh in 1994 in the wake of death threat by fundamentalist outfits for her alleged anti-Islamic views. Since then, she has been living in exile.

(With inputs from ANI)

(Image: ANI/Unsplash)