A publisher of a slain online critic of religious militancy was hacked to death in the Bangladeshi capital, police said, hours after similar attacks wounded two secular writers and another publisher. Faysal Arefin, who was killed on Saturday in Dhaka, published books by Avijit Roy, a US citizen of Bangladeshi origin who was murdered in the same way in February. The body of Arefin, the 43-year-old chief of the Jagriti Prokashoni publishing house, was found inside his office. The perpetrators had locked the office before carrying out the attack, police said. Abbas Faiz, Bangladesh Researcher at Amnesty International, said: “The situation is becoming increasingly dangerous for those brave enough to speak their own minds. The latest heinous criminal attacks are a deliberate assault against freedom of expression in the country. Earlier in the day, publisher Ahmed Rahim Tutul – who also published Roy – and two writers were shot and stabbed by three men in the office of the Shudhdhoswar publishing house. Over the past several months attacks have been carried out against secular writers and bloggers leaving five of them dead.
Though taking law into hands cannot be approved yet the attacks against the secular elements are clear indication that Prime Minister Hasina Wajid’s agenda is being defied because vast majority of Bangladeshi people are practicising Muslims. The humble and religious minded Bangladesh people are being victimised under the pretext that they indulged in mass murder and other crimes during the separation war. Several top Jamaat-e-Islami leaders have been hanged under these charges while many more are still languishing in jails as the Hasina Wajid government is bent upon silencing the voice of opponents of her policies of secularism. At the behest of the government. Bangladesh’s Supreme Court had earlier reinstated a ban on Islamic political parties after striking down a key constitutional amendment. Bangladesh’s first constitution made secularism a key pillar. Following a 1975 coup, the army-led government amended the constitution’s guiding principle to “faith in Allah” in 1979.Religious parties, which were banned in the original 1971 constitution but legalised by the 1979 amendments, are now banned again as the “faith in Allah” provision has been struck down. Therefore the attacks against secular writers, publishers and bloggers are reflection of the resentment of the Islam loving majority of Bangladesh population against the policy of secularism by Hasina Wajid, the sole purpose of which is to please the influential Hindus in her country and in neighbouring India.
