For the third time in four months, a Bangladeshi blogger who often wrote against Muslim fundamentalism has been found brutally hacked to death.
This month claimed the life of Ananta Bijoy Das, who wrote for the blog Mukto-Mona.
As reported by the BBC, Das was in the midst of an appeals process to allow him to travel to Sweden for a PEN association talk, but the country initially blocked his visa fearing him a fight risk.
As was the case with fellow fundamentalism critic Washiqur Rahman on March 31, Das was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants as he walked to work. Police told the Associated Press that Das died immediately following the attack.
Rahman himself had doubled down his determination after atheist writer Avijit Roy, the “Richard Dawkins of Bangladesh,” who also wrote for Mukto-Mona, was found murdered at his home in late February.
The chain doesn’t even stop there. Police say that Roy’s killer was Farabi Shafiur Rahman, who had been arrested for threatening the man scheduled to prepare the body of yet another murdered blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, who was slain in 2013.
H/T BBC. Illustration by Max Fleishman
