Sunday, November 1, 2015

Secular Publishers Attacked, One Dead, in Latest Bangladesh Atrocities

"I saw him lying upside down and in a massive pool of blood. They slaughtered his neck. He is dead,” said the victim’s father in an interview with the AFP new source per a BBC journalist covering the real life horror story that occurred this Saturday in Bangladesh. Found in his Jagriti Publishing third-floor city centre office in Dhaka, 43 year old secular publisher Faisal Arefin Dipon was not the only publishing-related victim yesterday. Before Dipon’s tragedy, another secular publisher, Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, and his writers,Tareque Rahim and Ranadeep Basu, were also brutally attacked and left to die in a Dhaka office where they had been locked in by their assailants. After being taken to the hospital, one of the three surviving victims is believed to be in critical condition.

Both the murder and attempted murders of these men have been claimed by the Bangladeshi al-Qaeda offshoot group Ansar al-Islam, and are just the latest Dhaka atrocities committed against victims who write or publish material containing opinions that are contrary to radical Islamic beliefs. Bangladeshi citizens responded by holding protests in the streets to show support for the individuals who were preyed upon. Both of Saturday’s publisher victims had published works by Avijit Roy, an anti-radical Islam blogger killed on February 27th. Since then, during a period of 8 months, three more bloggers have been killed, and now, one of their publishers.

The repeated al-Qaeda-related attacks on secular writers and their publishers in Bangladesh are a sad commentary on the state of the country’s control over terrorism. The central government and local authorities seem either ineffective or apathetic in providing security for potential victims, which will no doubt embolden the terrorists. One can’t help but wonder if the authorities are sympathetic to the radical Islamic cause or scared of it. And will the U.S. take a stand on such atrocities to aid the people of Bangladesh like they did for the lawyer’s son in China?


Amanda Zgonina

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