A blogger recognized for his atheist views has been stabbed to demise in Bangladesh, inside the cutting-edge of a chain of assaults on independent writers in the growing south Asian kingdom.
Washiqur Rahman, 27, died of great injuries inflicted within the assault on Monday morning in Dhaka, the capital.
Police have arrested two guys for the murder, which comes simply weeks after an American atheist blogger turned into killed in Dhaka, in a crime that induced worldwide outrage.
Bangladesh government arrest guy over atheist blogger’s homicide
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Local police leader Wahidul Islam instructed Agence France-Presse the victim were “brutally hacked to death this morning with massive knives just 500 yards [460 metres] from his domestic at Dhaka’s Begunbari region”.
Islam stated the two detained guys have been arrested at once after the assault as they tried to escape the scene.
The suspects have so far been recognized handiest as Zikrullah, stated to be a scholar at a religious college near the town of Chittagong, and Ariful Islam, who police say was reading on the Darul Ulum non secular faculty in Dhaka. Police are looking a 3rd guy.
“Folks who killed him differed on his ideologies about faith. He become no longer an atheist. He became a believer. But the manner he observed faith became exceptional from the manner radical organizations insist,” Biplob Kumar Sarkar, deputy commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan police, informed the Mum or dad.
However, Tamanna Setu, a friend of Rahman said: “He used to write down a satirical column on facebook approximately towards believers. He was an atheist. His killing must be related to his writing,”
One social media activist stated that he used to write down “towards spiritual fundamentalism”.
“It appeared Rahman used to jot down the use of a pen call, Kutshit Hasher Chhana [Ugly Duckling],” Imran Sarker, head of the Blogger and On line Activists Community in Bangladesh, said. “He turned into a revolutionary loose thinker and turned into towards spiritual fundamentalism.”
Ibrahim Khalil, a fellow blogger who knew Rahman via activities they organised, stated Rahman turned into a “modern” who wrote towards non secular extremism and repression of ethnic minorities.
“I can say he turned into a totally humble man,” Khalil said.
The Dhaka Tribune pronounced that the useless man was a member of 8 facebook organization pages together with Atheist Bangladesh.
Rahman, who worked at a travel enterprise as an IT supervisor, is the third such blogger to were murdered in the Muslim-majority u. S. Inside the beyond years.
Atheist blogger Avijit Roy ‘became not just someone … he became a motion’
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Police have also arrested a suspect over the killing in February of yankee atheist creator and blogger Avijit Roy.
Roy, an engineer of Bangladeshi starting place, was killed by machete-wielding assailants near Dhaka College as he and his wife have been getting back from an e book fair last month. His wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, suffered head accidents and lost a finger. She later back to the usa for treatment.
“Even as Avijit and i have been being ruthlessly attacked, the Neighborhood police stood close by and did now not act,” Rafida instructed Reuters.
Roy’s death sparked uproar at domestic and overseas, with hundreds of secular activists protesting for days to call for justice. Additionally, they criticised the country’s authorities for no longer doing sufficient to defend secularist writers.
An adviser to Sheikh Hasina, the top minister, appeared in feedback in advance this month to bypass the blame for the homicide of Roy on to the police.
“Pick out the black sheep a few of the force and bring them below law and justice to uphold your image,” HT Imam advised senior officials.
A suspect in the killing, named as Farabi Shafiur Rahman, had formerly threatened Roy numerous instances, consisting of on fb, where he stated Roy could be killed upon his arrival in Dhaka. Rahman turned into arrested in 2013 for making threats to a cleric for administering Islamic funeral rites to some other atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, who become murdered.
Bangladesh in search of police ‘black sheep’ on duty whilst US blogger changed into killed
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Media organization Journalists Without boundary lines rated Bangladesh 146th amongst one hundred eighty nations in a ranking of press freedom final year.
In 2004, assailants attacked Bangladeshi creator Humayun Azad, also with machetes. Azad survived the attack, however died in mysterious occasions later that yr in Germany, where he had long gone on an academic go to.
Political violence in recent months has claimed the lives of more than a hundred humans and left loads extra injured. Clashes have pitted activists from the competition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), which boycotted fashionable elections a year in the past, and different events in opposition to security forces. The contemporary protests have been known as by using Khaleda Zia, chief of the BNP, who desires Hasina to renounce and contact clean polls. Hasina has told her authorities would stay in workplace until her term ends in 2019. Allies of the BNP include Islamist parties.
The united states of america of more than one hundred sixty million humans has struggled to solve profound disagreements over the position of faith in politics and society in the latest years.
