The victims in both attacks had been involved in the publishing of works by Bangladeshi-US blogger and writer, Avijit Roy, who was himself hacked to death on the Dhaka University campus in February.
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Shuddhaswar owner Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, 43, whose condition is still serious, also previously brought out several of Roy’s books including one on homosexuality. And I saw him lying upside down in a massive pool of blood.
Yesterday, two separate violent attacks on the lives of publishers and bloggers in the country’s capital, Dhaka made it clear that there is no end in sight for the culture of fear these deaths have helped cultivate.
The two writers were identified by police as Ranadeep Basu and Tariq Rahim.
“You have published many books of atheists, you have sinned”.
Bangladesh has also been rocked by the recent murders of an Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer, while Dhaka’s main Shiite shrine was bombed last weekend, killing two people and wounded dozens.
Roy is one of four atheist bloggers murdered in Bangladesh this year.
Other residents said the attackers, around three to four in number, fled after locking up the bleeding victims inside the office-room.
The day which will be observed on Monday was proposed by France to the United Nations to honour the memory of two French journalists – Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon – murdered in Mali on Nov 2, 2013. “These attacks have echoes of our Liberation War when eliminating the country’s intellectuals was a very strategic war policy”. Police also visited his office at Sutrapur. Michael De Dora, public policy director at the Center for Inquiry, a US based non-profit that campaigns on free speech issues, asked in a statement issued after Dipan’s death.
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Amnesty worldwide called on the Bangladesh government to “act urgently” to ensure the protection of others in the country, calling the attacks ” a deliberate assault against freedom of expression”. Bangladesh Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina has accused opposition parties including Bangladesh National Party and right-wing Jama’at-e-Islami for backing fundamentalist and local extremist organizations. The government did not crack down on the Islamists until there was Western criticism for failing to stop the attacks.
