The sleeping dragon

When most people think of seismically-active regions, Bangladesh is not ordinarily near the top of the list.

Cyclones, sure.  They come roaring up the Bay of Bengal with a horrifying regularity, and most of the country is low enough in elevation that the storms barely even slow down.  The worst was the 1970 Bhola cyclone, which still holds a record as the deadliest storm in recorded history.  The official death toll was five hundred thousand, but is likely higher than that, mostly people who lived in the lowlands near the city of Chittagong.

Unfortunately for the citizens of Bangladesh, though, they're also at high risk for earthquakes -- something that has only been recognized recently.  A 2021 study led by Muhammad Qumrul Hassan of the University of Dhaka found that the region is right on top of the junction of three different tectonic plates, the Eurasian Plate, the Indian Plate, and the small Burma Plate ("small" here means geographic area, not capacity for damage -- the devastating 2004 earthquake and tsunami was caused by a slippage of the Burma Plate relative to the Indian Plate).  But the compression and twisting of the land near the junction has created enough stresses that the entire country is crisscrossed with faults, most notably the Dauki Fault and the Haflong Thrust (which crosses into the Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam to the north).

The whole thing is exceedingly complex, and still poorly understood.  Imagine laying a sheet of pie crust on a table, and you and two friends each stand around it and push, pull, or twist it from the edge.  The sheet will wrinkle, tear, and hump up in places, but exactly where those deformations will end up isn't easily predictable because it depends on where there was weakness in the dough before you started messing with it.  This is the situation with the chunk of the Earth's crust that underlies Bangladesh.  Add to that the fact that the region is poor, and much of it is jungle- or swamp-covered and pretty inaccessible to study, and you have a picture of the extent to which we don't understand the situation.

However -- alarmingly -- a 2016 study found that the entire region has been building up stress for at least four hundred years, meaning when the some piece of fault slips, it's likely to be catastrophic.

The whole topic comes up because of a rather terrifying discovery that was the subject of a paper this week in Nature Communications.  Geoscientists Elizabeth Chamberlain (of Wageningen University). Michael Steckler (of Columbia Univeristy), and colleagues were studying a puzzling historical shift in the channel of the Ganges River, and quite by accident -- it was in an area some locals were digging in to create a pond -- they saw the unmistakable signs of seismites.  These are features in rock layers created by massive earthquakes, in this case a column of sand that had erupted through pre-existing strata during a colossal temblor.  Upon analysis, they found that the river had changed course because of a massive earthquake about 2,500 years ago.

Imagine an event big enough to shift the path of a river that size.

A change in the course of a river is called an avulsion, and it normally takes decades or centuries.  (It's an avulsion of the Mississippi River that the levee system in southern Louisiana is attempting to prevent -- something I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.)  Seismic avulsions are much less common, but when they happen it's sudden and spectacular.  The only other one I've ever heard of is the shift in the Mississippi caused by the 1812 New Madrid earthquake, which dropped the land so much it cut off a meander and created Reelfoot Lake.

The seismic record in Bangladesh indicates that they're dangerously at risk for another earthquake -- and because of the complexity and our lack of comprehension of the fault system underlying the country, the geologists aren't certain where is likeliest to rupture.  There's a sleeping dragon underneath one of the poorest countries in Asia -- and we're only beginning to understand when and how it might suddenly awaken.

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The price of silence

I'm going to make a bold statement here: in any modern society, the single most critical thing for fostering intellectual advancement is freedom of speech.  Nothing else -- whether the country is run by liberals or conservatives, whether it is predominantly religious or secular, whether it's a democracy or monarchy or some other form of government -- really matters.

Freedom of speech also trumps considerations of politeness and offense.  I'm all for being compassionate and kind, and think that "don't be a dick" is a pretty good starting point for morality.  That said, it is more important that you be allowed to say what you think than it is for me to be happy about it.

It's like the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  My general opinion was that as satire goes, Charlie Hebdo was juvenile and not particularly funny.  Their crude lampooning of... well, everything... didn't even reach Mad magazine standards for humor.  But you know what?  That is entirely irrelevant.  The fact that I, or anyone else, might be offended by what they publish leaves us the easy option of not reading it.

[Nota bene:  I'm not considering true hate speech, here -- when someone makes credible material threats against someone else based on ethnic origin, nationality, sexual orientation, or religion.  But I think the distinction is clear enough that the point hardly needed to be made.]

The whole topic comes up because of the deaths in the past months of eight Bangladeshi bloggers, journalists, and writers, hacked to death with machetes because they had, in the minds of conservative Muslims, "insulted Islam."  The government has been reluctant to pursue the attackers, because this puts them in the awkward position of supporting people who are being critical of the state religion -- or who are simply outspoken atheists.

It would be unsurprising if this had the effect of silencing the remaining secular writers in the country.  Who could blame people for going into hiding if there's a very real danger that they'll be butchered if they keep speaking out?  Amazingly, there are three bloggers who have refused to be intimidated.  They were asked to make a statement to CNN, and offered the possibility of anonymity.

All three gave statements, and refused to do so anonymously.

Their statements are profiles in courage.  I want you to go back and read the original post (linked above), but the words they wrote are so inspiring, and so germane to what I discuss here on a daily basis, that I have to excerpt them.

From Imran H. Sarker, founder of the Bangladeshi Bloggers and Online Activist Network:

With the killing of one blogger after another, we seem to be heading towards total oblivion. As the world progresses under the banner of freedom of expression, we seem to be hurtling backwards. Our freedom is being silenced by the serial murder of bloggers and publishers.

From Maruf Rosul, writer for the Mukto-Mona human rights blog:

Freedom of expression in my country is dying...   Right now, our beloved Bangladesh is bleeding ceaselessly.  The land is torn asunder by the fanatics.  There is no way to disagree with the establishment or to ask questions about anything, even though freedom of speech is our constitutional right.

From Arif Jebtik, secular blogger and writer:

As they continue to tally their votes in order to hold power and influence, our mainstream politicians are the ones who are creating the debacles our country is currently facing right now. It is they who are silently broadening the path for radicalized murderers and extremists.

It's very easy, over here in the United States, to feel nothing but helpless rage at the murderers who are trying to squelch free speech.  What can we do, other than stand by and watch as secular writers are intimidated, injured, or killed?

First, visit their websites (linked above).  Show them support.  If it's possible, contribute financially.  The extremists' goal is not only directly to harm secular bloggers, but to fragment and intimidate their allies.  These people are continuing to speak out, at the risk of their lives, in order to maintain the standard of free speech that is the hallmark of civilized society.

On a personal note, as a blogger who often writes on controversial topics, I can't imagine being in that situation myself.  Would I have the courage to do what Sarker, Rosul, and Jebtik are doing, knowing that I could be ambushed and murdered in the street simply for voicing my opinion?  I don't know.  I'd like to think I would, but am profoundly grateful that I don't have to live with that threat.  However, one thing is certain: there is nothing to be gained by silence.  The price of silence is the loss of one of the most important freedoms we have.  If the extremists stop the dissenting voices, they will truly have won.