{"id":76,"date":"2015-02-27T12:17:08","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T12:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=76"},"modified":"2015-03-04T12:22:16","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T12:22:16","slug":"unidentified-attackers-hack-us-blogger-avijit-roy-to-death-in-dhaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"Unidentified attackers hack US blogger Avijit Roy to death in Dhaka"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bloger\"<\/a>A prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger known for speaking out against religious fundamentalism was hacked to death in the streets of Bangladesh’s capital as he walked with his wife, police said on Friday.<\/p>\n

The Thursday night attack on Avijit Roy, a Bangladesh-born US citizen, occurred along a crowded stretch of sidewalk as he and his wife, Rafida Ahmed, were returning from a book fair at Dhaka University. Ahmed, who is also a blogger, was seriously injured.<\/p>\n

Police have named no suspects in the attack, but Roy was a prominent voice against religious extremism, and his family and friends say he had been threatened in the past for his writings.<\/p>\n

The local police chief, Sirajul Islam, told The Associated Press that the assailants used cleavers to attack Roy and his wife.<\/p>\n

“Several attackers took part in the attack and at least two assailants hit them directly,” Islam said, adding that two blood-stained cleavers were found after the attack.<\/p>\n

Roy had founded a popular Bengali-language blog \u2014 Mukto-mona, or Free Mind \u2014 in which articles on scientific reasoning and religious extremism featured prominently.<\/p>\n

Anujit Roy, his younger brother, said Roy had returned to the country earlier this month from the US and was planning to go back in March.<\/p>\n

Similar attacks have taken place in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people ruled by secular laws, in the past. Investigators have said religious fanatics were behind those attacks.<\/p>\n

In 2013, another blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, who also spoke out against religious extremism, was killed by unidentified assailants near his Dhaka home. In 2004, Humayun Azad, a prominent writer and a teacher of Dhaka University, was seriously injured in an attack when he was returning from the same book fair.<\/p>\n

Baki Billah, a friend of Roy and a blogger, told Independent TV that Roy had been threatened earlier by people upset at his writing.<\/p>\n

“He was a free thinker. He was a Hindu but he was not only a strong voice against Islamic fanatics but also equally against other religious fanatics,” Billah said.<\/p>\n

“We are saddened. We don’t know what the government will do to find the killers. We want justice,” he said.<\/p>\n

Source: PTI\/ AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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