Topic: The brutal fight of Bangladesh’s secular voices to be heard (Read 325 times)
Bangladesh is one of the last remaining "secular" Muslim-majority countries, and therefore it has become a target of the Islamist regimes of the Middle-east (such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait). The Salafists are pouring in billions of USD every year from the Middle East to convert the secular Bangladeshis to Salafists. And it is slowly changing the Bangladeshi society. I expect an assassination attempt against Sheikh Hasina (the Prime Minister of Bangladesh) sooner or later. She is the main bulwark against the Salafist expansion in Bangladesh right now. Her father (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) was assassinated by the Salafists in 1975.
Niloy Chakrabarti was only the latest atheist blogger to be hacked to death in the country this year. The government crackdown on ‘blasphemers’ has sent others into hiding. What is the future for the country’s liberal writers?
In February 2015, Avijit Roy and his wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, travelled from their home in Atlanta, Georgia, to Dhaka, the capital Bangladesh. This was their home town, and they were attending the annual Ekushey book fair, which runs all month. They had been unable to attend in 2014 because Roy had received death threats after the publication of his book The Virus of Faith, which criticised religion.
The couple were familiar with controversy. They ran a Bengali-language web forum called Mukto-Mona, or Free Minds, promoting rationalist thought, and had been threatened by Islamic fundamentalists. During their trip to Dhaka, they avoided being out late at night, varied their routines and checked in regularly with relatives. For the first 10 days, the strategy seemed to work.
On 26 February, they attended a series of events at the University of Dhaka, where the book fair is held. They left in the evening, walking back to their car through a crowded and well-lit area. Suddenly, they were surrounded by a group of masked men with machetes. Ahmed doesn’t remember what happened next, as the knives rained down upon them. There were hundreds of people around, including police officers. They did not step in. After the attack, a young journalist intervened and drove them to the hospital. Ahmed survived, severely injured. It was too late for Roy, who died during the drive.
Read more : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/22/brutal-fight-of-bangladeshs-secular-voices-to-be-heard
In February 2015, Avijit Roy and his wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, travelled from their home in Atlanta, Georgia, to Dhaka, the capital Bangladesh. This was their home town, and they were attending the annual Ekushey book fair, which runs all month. They had been unable to attend in 2014 because Roy had received death threats after the publication of his book The Virus of Faith, which criticised religion.
The couple were familiar with controversy. They ran a Bengali-language web forum called Mukto-Mona, or Free Minds, promoting rationalist thought, and had been threatened by Islamic fundamentalists. During their trip to Dhaka, they avoided being out late at night, varied their routines and checked in regularly with relatives. For the first 10 days, the strategy seemed to work.
On 26 February, they attended a series of events at the University of Dhaka, where the book fair is held. They left in the evening, walking back to their car through a crowded and well-lit area. Suddenly, they were surrounded by a group of masked men with machetes. Ahmed doesn’t remember what happened next, as the knives rained down upon them. There were hundreds of people around, including police officers. They did not step in. After the attack, a young journalist intervened and drove them to the hospital. Ahmed survived, severely injured. It was too late for Roy, who died during the drive.
Read more : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/22/brutal-fight-of-bangladeshs-secular-voices-to-be-heard
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