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Bangladeshi activists protest against the killing of Faisal Arefin Deepan in Dhaka.
The publisher of slain Bangladesh blogger Avijit Roy was hacked to death in the capital Dhaka on Saturday. Faisal Arefin Dipan, 43, was killed in his third-floor office in central Dhaka. Dipan owned Jagritee Publishers based at Aziz Supermarket, a hub for alternative and small publishers in Dhaka. He published several books of Avijit Roy.
The incident came just hours after miscreants hacked a publisher Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, secular blogger Ranadipam Basu and Tareq Rahim at the office of Shuddhaswar publications in the capital. Tutul, 43, was the owner of Shuddhaswar, which published books by Avijit Roy and several other young secular writers. Activists described the third victim, Rahim, 30, as a young secular blogger and poet. The attackers padlocked the office door from outside as they left. Police broke the lock and found the three injured men in a pool of blood.
One of the victims Basu, 50, posted a short Facebook status immediately after the attack: “They hacked us, me Tutul and Tareq” . A witness told The Daily Star newspaper that a group of men stormed into the Shuddhaswar offices and held a gun to his head before attacking Tutul, Basu and Rahim. “Frozen in fear, I could not tell how many there were. They stabbed the trio in the office room and left in hurry,” he told the newspaper. “I also heard gunshots,” he added.
“Doctors told us that the conditions of two, including the publisher, were critical. They were attacked in their heads and chests,” Imran H. Sarker, the head of a secular bloggers’ group told AFP, adding two of the victims appeared to also have bullet wounds.
Avijit Roy.
Blogger Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin was hacked to death near a book fair in the capital Dhaka in February this year — the first in a series of attacks this year that have targeted atheist and secular bloggers in Bangladesh. Avijit Roya was a also a prolific writer and had penned down a dozen books, mostly about science, philosophy and materialism. His last books Obisshahser Dorshon (The Philosophy of Disbelief) and Biswasher Virus (The Virus of Faith), were well received around the world. In the Virus of Faith his main argument is that “faith-based terrorism will wreak havoc on society in epidemic proportions”. He also edited a popular blog Mukto-Mona.
This year at least four secular bloggers have been killed by suspected Islamists in almost identical attacks, which police have blamed on the banned local Islamist militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT).
Countercurrents is edited by Binu Matthew.
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