| Saturday , August 8 , 2015 |
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150808/jsp/frontpage/story_36075.jsp#.VcVQlFSqqko
Machete falls on tolerance- Another Bangla blogger hacked to death, Qaida unit claims responsibility | |
| Ananya Sengputa and Agencies | |
 Niloy, 40, who used the pseudonym Niloy Neel, had been receiving threats for sometime and had shown Calcutta as his place of residence on his Facebook page in the hope of throwing would-be assailants off track. But four to five attackers today entered the flat, pushed aside his wife Ashamoni and a friend and attacked him with machetes - a weapon used to kill all the four bloggers, police said. Krishnapada Roy, Dhaka metropolitan police's detective branch joint commissioner, said there were signs of "haphazard hacking on Niloy's throat and neck". "They chose to kill him at this time of day because the men from the families close by had gone to attend the Juma (Friday) prayers." The Ansar-Al-Islam, the Bangladesh chapter of al Qaida in the Indian subcontinent, claimed responsibility for the murder. "Mujahidin of Ansar-Al-Islam carried out an operation to slaughter an enemy...." the group said in a statement. The authenticity of the email, attributed to Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, who claims to be a spokesperson for the Ansar-Al-Islam, could not be verified independently. Niloy was one of hundreds of bloggers driving a movement demanding the death penalty for leaders accused of atrocities in Bangladesh's 1971 War of Independence. The campaign compelled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to open in 2010 an inquiry into war crimes. A tribunal has since convicted several senior leaders of an Islamist party, who in 1971 opposed the partition of Bangladesh from Pakistan, of various crimes. The leaders have denied the charges. "The violent killing of another critical voice in Bangladesh shows that serious threats to freedom of expression persist in the country," the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, and the special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings, Christof Heyns, said in a joint statement issued in Geneva. "Niloy was a friend, a colleague, an activist of the pro-liberation platform. He died because there is no justice in this country," said Imran Sarker, spokesperson for the Ganajagaran Mancha, a network of activists and bloggers. Sarker had earlier tweeted that Niloy was "writing for women's rights, indigenous peoples, even for all other minorities" and "he was a critic of religious extremism that provoked bombing... and the killing of thousands of civilians". "Who is next for demanding justice for Niloy? I don't know but I'll be there till my last breath for justice & rule of law in Bangladesh. Support us in this fight for a safe motherland that we got sacrificing blood of three millions," he added. Niloy was an organiser of the Science and Rationalist Association of Bangladesh and people close to the blogger said that he had feared for his life when the killing spree of free thinkers started in February this year with Avijit Roy, a US citizen of Bangladeshi origin, being hacked to death. "It is so unfortunate that these attacks on free thinkers have become a global phenomenon. It happened in France this year, and in Bangladesh it has been happening for some time. I do not know if it's ignorance or intolerance," said Akku Chowdhury, a freedom fighter and director of the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka. "It is frustrating and we have nowhere to escape. But we cannot run. They are ruthless - it is scary and unbelievable that one can be killed for thinking or feeling differently," Chowdhury added. "People like us, who have fought for this country, can only hope and pray that we have the collective strength to fight this insanity." "This is getting to be a predictable pattern. Unless the government bans the Jamaat-e-Islami and neutralises (the extremist strain), we are surely heading for a bloodshed that will make us forget 1971," said Mac Haque, a jazz-rock fusion musician and activist. "These murders show how the system of justice has completely failed in this country," said Hasna Jasimuddin Moudud, daughter of the poet Jasimuddin. |
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