Social activists and bloggers take part in a torchlight procession to protest against the killing of blogger Ananta Bijoy Das in Dhaka yesterday. Unknown attackers have hacked a free-thinking blogger to death in Bangladesh’s northeastern Sylhet city on May 12.
AFP/Dhaka
Leading authors, including Salman Rushdie and fellow Booker prize winners Margaret Atwood and Yann Martell, called on Bangladesh’s government yesterday to put an end to a spate of deadly attacks on
atheist bloggers.
Three bloggers have been hacked to death by suspected Islamist militants since February, with the latest victim, Ananta Bijoy Das, attacked with machetes during morning rush hour in the city of Sylhet earlier this month.
In a petition published in the London-based daily The Guardian, 150 authors called on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government “to do all in their power to ensure that the tragic events of the last three months are not repeated, and to bring the perpetrators to justice”.
“We are gravely concerned by this escalating pattern of violence against writers and journalists who are peacefully expressing their views,” said the petition.
“Freedom of expression is a fundamental right under Bangladesh’s constitution as well as one of the rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We call on the Bangladeshi authorities to swiftly and impartially investigate Ananta Bijoy Das’s death as well as the murders of Avijit Roy and Washiqur Rahman Babu, and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice in accordance with international fair trial standards.”
With these three murders bringing the total of authors who have been attacked in Bangladesh since 2013 to six, the writers say they are “gravely concerned by this escalating pattern of violence against writers and journalists who are peacefully expressing their views”.
Bangladesh is an officially secular country but more than 90% of its 160mn population are Muslim.
The country has seen a rise in attacks by religious extremists in recent years, with the attacks on the bloggers drawing widespread criticism that a culture of impunity has been allowed to flourish.
Rushdie spent a decade in hiding after Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for his death over his book “The Satanic Verses”, which was seen as mocking the Prophet Mohammed.
Jo Glanville, director of English PEN, described the recent attacks as “a campaign of violence against bloggers and writers who are courageous enough to speak out in a hostile culture for free speech”.
“The government of Bangladesh must urgently address the climate of impunity and be seen to safeguard freedom of expression,” she said. “These shocking events have united writers throughout the world in an important show of solidarity.”
Other signatories included the leading Indian authors Amitav Ghosh and Rohinton Mistry along with the Irish writer Colm Toibin and Norway’s Karl Ove Knausgaard.
