Saturday, August 8, 2015

Islamists hack Blogger to death with machetes

Death for Freedom of Speech

“There were six people who knocked on his door, saying that they were looking to rent a flat. Two of them then took him to a room and slaughtered him there,” Muntashirul Islam, a deputy police commissioner, said. (The Guardian)

(New York Times) - Attackers armed with machetes killed a blogger in Bangladesh on Friday, the fourth killing of an online critic of religious extremism in less than six months.

Niloy Chatterjee, 40, who advocated secularism, was killed in his flat in the capital Dhaka, said police official Mustafizur Rahman.

"We are speechless. He was demanding justice for the killing of other bloggers," said Imran Sarker, head of a network of activists and bloggers.

"Who will be next for demanding justice for Niloy?"

The four Bangladeshi bloggers who have been killed this year:
(clockwise from top left) Niloy Chakrabarti, Ananta Bijoy Das,
Washiqur Rahman and Avijit Roy. Photograph: Guardian

Chatterjee, who used the pen-name Niloy Neel, was a critic of religious extremism that led to bombings in mosques and the killing of civilians, Sarker said.

Chatterjee was also one of hundreds of bloggers driving a movement demanding the death penalty for Islamist leaders accused of atrocities in Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence.

Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years, while the government has tried to crack down on hardline Islamist groups seeking to make the South Asian nation of 160 million, whose population is majority Muslim, a sharia-based state.

In February, machete-wielding assailants hacked to death a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin and critic of religious militancy, Avijit Roy, and seriously injured his wife and fellow blogger, Rafida Bonya Ahmed.

On March 30, Washiqur Rahman, another secular blogger who aired his outrage over Roy's death on social media, was killed in a similar fashion.

Another secular blogger, Ananta Bijoy Das, was attacked by machete-wielding attackers and killed in the northeastern district of Sylhet on May 12.

Blogger killed in machete attack in Bangladesh

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