Bangladeshi-American Blogger Murdered In Dhaka

Posted February 27th, 2015 at 1:36 pm (UTC+0)
1 comment

B-yY5CvUsAAwUNL.jpg largeFrom Bangladesh today comes news that prominent writer and blogger Avijit Roy was attacked and killed on a busy sidewalk as he and his wife Rafida Ahmed (seen with him in Twitter photo above) were returning from a Dhaka book fair Thursday night.  She was injured but survived that attack.

A group calling itself Ansar Bangla 7 (below) has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the Prothom Alo newspaper, and has tweeted that Roy was killed for having spoken out against Islam.

Ansar_Bangla_7_(@AnsarBn_7)_Twitter_-_2015-02-27_10.21.02Late Thursday evening,men–perhaps more–reportedly attacked the couple with large knives, then ran away into the nearby crowd.

Roy, 42, was an athiest who authored  a popular Bengali-language blog, Mukto-mona, or “Free Mind,” in which he discussed issues of religion versus secular humanism.

Roy championed atheism as “a rational concept to oppose any unscientific and irrational belief.” And that’s what hardline Islamist groups have objected to, viewing such comments as attacks on Islam.

 

 

 

“As Roy himself warned, Bangladesh is appeasing the most insidious and violent strains of Islamism, and he new [sic] his own life was under threat. That appeasement of theocratic demands and naked threats must end, now.” – Bob Churchill, IHEU Communications Director, Feb. 27, 2015.

“We cannot know the assailants who carried out tonight’s vicious murder,” said International Humanist and Ethical Union communications director, Bob Churchill.  “But we do know this: Those who have openly made the most serious and credible threats on Roy’s life have been allowed to do so with impunity and now he is dead”

In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists Asia Program Coordinator Bob Dietz called on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government to “leave no stone unturned in investigating and prosecuting the attack on Avijit Roy and Rafida Ahmed Bonna.”

“This attack is emblematic of the culture of impunity that pervades Bangladesh, where the lack of accountability in previous attacks on the press continues to spurn a deadly cycle of violence,” Dietz said.

Last year, a Rajshahi University teacher, AKM Shafiul Islam, was stabbed to death allegedly because he opposed the wearing of burqas in the classroom by female students.

In 2013, another atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was murdered, allegedly by a little-known Islamist group called the Ansarullah Bengali Team.

In 2004, Humayun Azad, a prominent writer and teacher at Dhaka University, was seriously injured in an attack when he was returning from the same book fair.

 

Cecily Hilleary
Cecily began her reporting career in the 1990s, covering US Middle East policy for an English-language network in the UAE. She has lived and/or worked in the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf, consulting and producing for several regional radio and television networks and production houses, including MBC, Al-Arabiya, the former Emirates Media Incorporated and Al-Ikhbaria. She brings to VOA a keen understanding of global social, cultural and political issues.

One response to “Bangladeshi-American Blogger Murdered In Dhaka”

  1. […] in DhakaTimes of India (blog)US strongly condemns brutal Avijit killingDhakaTribuneVICE News -Voice of America (blog)all 519 news […]

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About rePRESSEDed

VOA reporter Cecily Hilleary monitors the state of free expression and free speech around the world.

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