ASIA PACIFIC

Bangladeshi Blogger Who Wrote on Site Promoting Secularism Is Killed

By JULFIKAR ALI MANIK and NIDA NAJAR
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A blogger who wrote for a website that promoted secularism was hacked to death on Tuesday by a group of four men, a police official said. It was the third fatal attack on a Bangladeshi blogger since February.
Four men chased the blogger, Ananta Bijoy Dash, through streets near his home in the northeastern city of Sylhet and attacked him, said Mohammad Rahamat Ullah, a police official in Sylhet. No arrests have been made, Mr. Ullah said.
The assailants walked away after the attack, leaving Mr. Dash’s body near a pond, Mr. Ullah said.
The attack was disturbingly familiar. Mr. Dash had written for Free Mind, a website that the Bangladeshi-American blogger Avijit Roy had moderated before being killed in February by machete-wielding assailants while leaving a book fair in Dhaka, the capital.
Five weeks after Mr. Roy’s death, another blogger, Oyasiqur Rhaman, was killed by three men with machetes in Dhaka. The deaths recalled the 2013 killing in Dhaka of the blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider.
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Blogger Killed in Bangladesh

Blogger Killed in Bangladesh

The Bangladeshi police said Ananta Bijoy Dasha, a blogger who advocated secularism, was killed by four attackers wielding sharp weapons on Tuesday in Sylhet.
 By Reuters on  May 12, 2015. Photo by Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
Mr. Haider, Mr. Roy and Mr. Rhaman were all part of a movement known as Shahbag, which called for the death penalty for Islamist political leaders who were implicated in atrocities committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 war for independence from Pakistan. Young Islamic activists reacted with fury to the Shahbag movement.
Imran Sarker, the head of an organization of secular bloggers in Bangladesh, said that Mr. Dash was also an activist with the Shahbag movement, organizing street protests in Sylhet. According to Free Mind, Mr. Dash had several years ago also edited a magazine called Logic that published essays on secular humanism. His friends described him as an atheist.
The killings of the bloggers have hit a nerve in Bangladesh, with its deepening divide between secular thinkers and conservative Muslims over the question of whether Bangladesh should be a secular or an Islamic nation.
Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh, a group that claims ties to the Indian branch of Al Qaeda, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent was responsible for the death of Mr. Dash, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online.
The leader of the Indian Qaeda branch had claimed responsibility for the deaths of Mr. Roy and Mr. Haider in a video posted on jihadist forums on May 2. The video was translated by SITE.
The police made two arrests in connection with Mr. Rhaman’s murder, and arrested just one person over Mr. Roy’s murder: Shafiur Rahman Farabi, who had called for Mr. Roy to be killed in a Facebook post. Mr. Farabi is not believed to have been present during the attack. Seven university students and the leader of a hard-line Islamist group were charged with Mr. Haider’s killing in March.
Mr. Sarker called the state’s response to the string of attacks inadequate, noting that few arrests had been made in the recent cases. “This is frustrating, that one by one we are killed and the government is doing nothing,” he said.
Friends of Mr. Dash said that they had warned him to be careful in his writing.
Talal Chowdhury, 32, a childhood friend of Mr. Dash’s who had moved to London a decade ago, said that Mr. Dash appeared to have turned to atheism in recent years.
“It was kind of new for me when I saw his writing and other people’s writing as well in the last five to six years,” said Mr. Chowdhury. “In Bangladesh nobody talked about this.”
Mr. Chowdhury said that he warned his friend in a Facebook post several years ago against provoking religious conservatives, but that Mr. Dash did not appear to take his advice seriously. Another friend who met Mr. Dash during his university days and who declined to give his full name for fear of his safety, said he had also warned the blogger.
“I warned him repeatedly to stop his writing to avoid risk,” said his friend, who gave his name as Chandra Das. “Ananta used to tell me with disbelief, ‘Who will come to Sylhet to kill me?’”
Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Nida Najar from New Delhi.