Raqib's research investigates how prosecuted individuals, their families, friends, and lawyers navigate the legal terrain in Bangladesh and how state officials silence the court system by shaping and defining the legal records on terrorism.  In making the court a securitized space,  security officials rely on lawfare to authorize secret detention and physical torture in judicial custody as well as to generate legal charges against political dissents on an industrial scale. In Bangladesh, nearly three million people are methodically strangled in the court system with terrorism charges (Mashal 2023). As protestors make demands for voting and political rights, the Bangladeshi authoritarian government rhetorically equates these forms of protest with terrorism and violence and carries out its own counterterror measures–from mass detention to violent torture. The government utilized law, security forces, and court officials together to manage and control political activism and large-scale prosecution,  securitizing the lives of millions by casting them as terrorists. Approaching lawfare as a socio-political process, my project aims to illuminate the legal and political infrastructure of lawfare in which people become the subject of security and the way they negotiate it.

A light lunch will be served.