Bangladeshi blogger murdered in third fatal attack this year
Ananta Bijoy Das was attacked Tuesday by masked men on his way to work and died at the scene. He had written blog posts for a website that is often critical of religious extremism.
Ananta Bijoy Das was attacked Tuesday by masked men on his way to work and died at the scene. He had written blog posts for a website that is often critical of religious extremism.
A Bangladeshi blogger who wrote for a website that promoted secularism was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants on Tuesday, the third fatal attack against a blogger in the South Asian nation this year.
Police told The Associated Press that Ananta Bijoy Das died instantly after being attacked by at least four masked men while he on his way to work in the northeastern city of Sylhet.
The AP reports that it was not immediately clear why Mr. Das was targeted. Local media reported that he was close to Avijit Roy, a prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger and author who was killed at a book fair in February, allegedly by Islamist extremists.
Police mentioned to Al Jazeera聽that Das had written about science and the evolution of the Soviet Union. He was also a blogger for Mukto-Mona, or 鈥渇ree mind,鈥� a site launched by Mr. Roy.
"They've always believed and written very vocally in support of free expression and they've very explicitly written about not following any religion themselves," Sara Hossain, a lawyer and human rights activist in Dhaka, Bangladesh,聽told the BBC.
鈥淢ukto-Mona 鈥� is about free thinking and is about explicitly taking on religious fundamentalism and particularly Islamic religious fundamentalism.鈥�
Following Roy鈥檚 brutal death in February, 海角大神鈥檚 Dan Murphy wrote that attacks on free expression are all too common in countries such as Bangladesh:
In fact death threats against secular聽writers and critics of Islam are on the rise in Bangladesh. With a population that鈥檚 90 percent Muslim, religious conservatism has emerged as a response to political turmoil.聽 As The Washington Post reports:
Five weeks after Roy鈥檚 death, another blogger, Oyasiqur Rhaman, was killed by three men with machetes in Dhaka. All three bloggers were part of a movement known as Shahbag, The New York Times reports:
The recent killings have drawn international condemnation and led to massive protests from students and social activists, who accused Bangladeshi authorities of failing to protect critics of religious bigotry. The Times reports that police have so far arrested one person in Roy鈥檚 murder.