Dhaka : Angry protesters took to the streets in Bangladesh on Sunday, blaming the government for its “apathy” and the “culture of impunity”, a day after a secular publisher was killed while two bloggers and a publisher were injured in attacks claimed by al-Qaeda in the Indian sub-continent, reports PTI.
Faisal Arefin Dipan, 43, a publisher who worked with slain atheist writer and blogger Avijit Roy, was hacked to death on Saturday in his third-floor office in central Dhaka.
The killing of Dipan came just hours after unidentified assailants attacked two secular writers and another publisher of US national Roy’s books Ahmedur Rshid Tutul, leaving one of them in a critically injured.
A group identifying itself as Ansar al-Islam — Bangladesh chapter of al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) — claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The attacks sparked widespread anger with different rights groups and social organisations staging street marches in the capital and elsewhere, slamming police failures to ensure security and demanding immediate government action to bring the perpetrators of the crimes to justice.
Teachers, writers, students and other protesters converged on Dhaka University to vent their anger. Ganojagoron Manch, a major forum of secular bloggers, also called for countrywide protests.
Online activists and bloggers blamed government’s “apathy” and “culture of impunity” for the murder of secular writers and publishers. Several rights activists alleged that the key people behind such murders and attacks could not be traced due to attempts to gain political mileage out of these incidents.
Before Dipan’s murder, four secularist bloggers were killed by Islamist militants in Bangladesh this year. Another leading publisher Farid Ahmed alleged unidentified assailants sent him an SMS issuing a death threat for publishing books authored by “atheists”.
“You have published several books written by atheists. You have committed enough sins. Get ready for your death,” the SMS sent by a group named Al-Ahrar said.