Another Bangladesh Blogger Killed

 

                 Just approximately 9days after the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) celebrated World Press Freedom Day in Riga, the capital city of Latvia, an attack has been made against the profession.
               There is no denial that an attack on a professional is an attack on the profession he or she practices. Sadly, a secular blogger was on Tuesday hacked to death in north-eastern Bangladesh.               
According to local police, the death of Ananta Bijoy Das marks the third of such deadly attacks since the start of the year, saying that Das was attacked by a masked gang wielding machetes in the city of Sylhet.
Mr Das wrote blogs for Mukto-Mona, a website once moderated by Avijit Roy, who was also hacked to death in February for criticism on religious intolerance.
The publisher lost his life in a machete attack while he was visiting the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, as he returned from a book fair in the city with his wife (now a widow) who also suffered head injuries and lost a finger in the attack.
Lawyer and human rights activist, Sara Hossain, revealed to BBC that Mr. Das and Mr. Roy were on a list of targets for a while before they were attacked.
She noted: “They’ve always believed and written very vocally in support of free expression and they’ve very explicitly written about not following any religion themselves,” she told the BBC World Service’s Newsday programme.
“These last two have been part of a blog called Mukto-Mona (Free Mind), which is about free thinking and is about explicitly taking on religious fundamentalism and particularly Islamic religious fundamentalism. Their names have been on lists of identified targets.”
Last month’s attack on Mr Roy prompted massive protests from students and social activists, who accused the authorities of failing to protect critics of religious bigotry.
Sometimes in March, another blogger, Washiqur Rahman, was hacked to death in Dhaka for which an Islamist and two madrassa students were arrested over his murder.