Niloy Neel’s Death
Avijit Roy was hacked to death in February as he left a university book fair. Washiqur Rahman was murdered in March as he left his house for work. Ananta Bijoy Ras was butchered in May while en route to his job at a bank. And on Friday, Niloy Neel was killed by a group of men who snuck into his fourth-floor apartment, again armed with machetes, and beheaded him.
All four men were secularist bloggers and activists who used Facebook to rail against religion and discuss its negative impact on Bangladeshi society. And all four men were murdered by machete-wielding Islamic militants, illustrating a troubling trend in Bangladesh where secularists are increasingly targeted for their views. An estimated 90% of Bangladesh's population is Muslim, making Islam far and away the majority religion.
Ansar-Al-Islam, a Bangladesh chapter of al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-Continent, claimed responsibility for the most recent attack.
"There were six people who knocked on his door, saying that they were looking to rent a flat. Two of them then took him to a room and slaughtered him there,” Muntashirul Islam, a deputy police commissioner, told the Guardian. Neel, whose real name is Niloy Chakrabarti, had reportedly requested police protection in recent weeks. It is not clear why the request wasn't granted. As recently as May the blogger told the paper "he was scared that he would be killed and that he had tried to file reports with local police about continued harassment," it said. "He claimed his complaints were not taken seriously." "What was already a human rights crisis has now spun entirely out of control, and it is now long overdue for the government of Bangladesh to take seriously its moral responsibility to protect the lives of its people," said Ronald A. Lindsay, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry (CFI), an Amherst-based nonprofit devoted to fostering a secular society, in a statement to Mashable.
