{"id":9873,"date":"2015-08-23T01:02:59","date_gmt":"2015-08-23T01:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=9873"},"modified":"2015-08-23T01:02:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-23T01:02:59","slug":"bangladesh-darkness-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/bangladesh-darkness-falls\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangladesh: Darkness Falls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chakrabarti\"<\/a>When a sub-headline begins like this\u2026:<\/p>\n

Niloy Chakrabarti was only the latest atheist blogger to be hacked to death in the country this year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That refers to the murder of Chakrabarti, slaughtered by a group of attackers in his appartment earlier this month.<\/p>\n

A long piece in today’s Guardian explains what’s been going on.<\/p>\n

Here’s an extract:<\/p>\n

[Avijit] Roy, who held dual US and Bangladeshi nationality, was the most prominent atheist writer to be attacked in Bangladesh, but he was not the first \u2013 or the last. On 30 March, a month after Roy\u2019s murder, another blogger, Washiqur Rahman Babu, was set upon by a group of masked assailants. On 12 May, Ananta Bijoy Das, who wrote for Mukto-Mona on rationalism and science, was attacked in his hometown of Sylhet. On 7 August, men with machetes broke into the Dhaka home of Niloy Chakrabarti, a blogger who used the pen name Niloy Neel. All three men died.<\/p>\n

The four murders in 2015 were brutal and happened in quick succession, prompting police action. Three people have been arrested \u2013 including a British citizen, Touhidur Rahman \u2013 over the deaths of Avijit Roy and Ananta Bijoy Das.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A British citizen: I\u2019ll just interrupt to note that fact. <\/p>\n

But the violence goes back further. It began on 15 January 2013, when atheist blogger and political activist Asif Mohiuddin was on his way to work and was attacked from behind by a group of men with machetes. \u201cI [thought] I would die,\u201d he tells me over Skype from his new home in Germany. \u201cBut somehow I survived.\u201d He spent weeks in intensive care, and still finds it difficult to move his neck. \u201cI think I will carry this problem all my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

A month later, another blogger critical of Islamic fundamentalism, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was attacked in the same way outside his house in Dhaka. He did not survive. In August 2014, someone broke into the Dhaka home of TV personality Nurul Islam Faruqi, who had criticised fundamentalist groups on air, and slit his throat. A humanist academic, Professor Shafiul Islam, who had pushed for a ban on full-face veils for students, was murdered near Rajshahi University in west Bangladesh in November.<\/p>\n

These brutal crimes have gone unpunished; arrests have not led to prosecutions. The government appears unwilling, or unable, to stand with atheists. Instead, in an attempt to appease Islamists, it has ramped up its own actions against \u201cblasphemous\u201d bloggers\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing. <\/p>\n

Links
\nhttp:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/08\/07\/asia\/bangladesh-blogger-niloy-neel-killed\/
\nhttp:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2015\/aug\/22\/brutal-fight-of-bangladeshs-secular-voices-to-be-heard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a sub-headline begins like this\u2026: Niloy Chakrabarti was only the latest atheist blogger to be hacked to death in the country this year. That refers to the murder of Chakrabarti, slaughtered by a group of attackers in his appartment … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15,711],"tags":[69,1115,51,804],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9873"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9877,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions\/9877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}