Third Secular Blogger Hacked To Death In Bangladesh

[kakatiya]

 

A masked gang wielding machetes hacked a secular blogger to death Tuesday in northeastern Bangladesh in the third such deadly attack by suspected Islamists since February.

Police said that Ananta Bijoy Das had been murdered in broad daylight as he headed to work at a local bank in the city of Sylhet, an attack that fellow writers said highlighted a culture of impunity.

Kamrul Hasan, commissioner of Sylhet police, said that a group of around four masked attackers had attacked Das with machetes at around 8.30am on a busy street in Bangladesh's fifth largest city.

"They chased him down the street and first attacked his head with their machetes and then attacked him all over his body," Hasan told AFP.

After the attackers fled into the crowds, Das was rushed to hospital but declared dead on arrival, police and medics said.

Commissioner Hasan would not be drawn on the motive for the attack but fellow writers said Das had been on a hit-list drawn up by militants who were behind the recent killing of a blogger who was a US citizen.

Imran Sarker, head of a Bangladeshi bloggers' association, confirmed to AFP that Das was an atheist who regularly blogged for Mukto-Mona.

The website used to be moderated by Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-born US citizen who was himself hacked to death in the capital Dhaka in February.

- 'Culture of impunity' -

"We condemn this heinous killing. It once again confirms our fear that there is a culture of impunity in Bangladesh. Anyone can now get away with killing a progressive free thinker," Sarker said.

Debasish Debu, a friend of Das, said that the 33-year-old banker was also an editor of a quarterly magazine called Jukti (Logic) and headed the Sylhet-based Science and Rationalist Council. 

"In recent months he received threats from Islamist extremists for his writings. He was on their hit-list," Debu told AFP from Sylhet.