Blogger Hacked To Death

Ananta Bijoy Das was
killed Tuesday morning as he left his home on his way to work at a bank,
police in the northeastern Bangladeshi city of Sylhet said.

Four masked men attacked him, hacking him to death with cleavers, said Sylhet Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kamrul Ahsan.

The
men then ran away. Because of the time of the morning when the attack
happened, there were few witnesses. But police said they are following
up on interviewing the few people who saw the incident.

Das was in his 30s, Ahsan said. He couldn’t provide an exact age.

His
death was at least the third this year of someone who was killed for
online posts critical of Islam. In each case, the attacks were carried
out publicly on city streets.

In March, Washiqur Rahman, 27, was hacked to death by two men with knives and meat cleavers just outside his house as he headed to work at a travel agency in the capital, Dhaka.

In
February, a Bangladesh-born American blogger, Avijit Roy, was similarly
killed with machetes and knives as he walked back from a book fair in
Dhaka.

The three victims are hardly the only ones who have paid a steep price for their views.

In the last two years, several bloggers have died, either murdered or under mysterious circumstances.

“The Bangladeshi government must urgently establish accountability in this murder case and others” the Committee to Project Journalists said
after Rahman’s death. “Otherwise the rest of the country’s bloggers,
commentators and journalists covering sensitive topics remain at grave
risk of being attacked as well.”