INVESTIGATIVE PROJECT
May 12, 2015

For the third time this year, Islamist radicals in Bangladesh hacked a secular writer to death in public. Four masked men chased down Ananta Bijoy Das Tuesday morning as Das left his home in Sylhet. They hacked him with machetes after running him down. “Ananta died on the spot,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kamrul Hasan told the Daily Star. “Ananta was an organiser of local progressive publication outlet Jukti (logic) and a relentless writer on science.”Das was 31. OnMarch 30, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu, 27, was murdered on his way to work. Like Das, Babu’s writings criticized religious fundamentalism. On Feb. 26, American citizen Avijit Roy was killed, and his wife severely injured, when attackers jumped them at a book fair. Roy had been threatened for his writings against religion, including his statement that religious extremism is like a virus: “if allowed to spread [it] will wreak havoc on society in epidemic proportions.” READ MORE