The killing of bloggers and tourists in Dhaka — and the latest string of bombings — has instilled fear among young, progressive writers in Bangladesh.
DHAKA — Sitting outside a tea shop in Dhaka on a recent evening, Baki Billah, a soft-spoken 36-year-old blogger, glanced from table to table to see if anyone was watching him. “Most of the time now, I stay at home,” he said.
In February, his friend and fellow blogger Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin, was hacked to death by Islamist extremists a few blocks away. Roy and his wife were riding home from a book fair when men pulled them out of their rickshaw. Roy was slashed three times on the side of his head. His wife, who survived, was left covered in blood.
Since the start of the year, Islamist fundamentalists have killed at least four secular bloggers in Bangladesh. They have also issued death threats to other bloggers. Dozens more have been named on “hit lists” circulated by extremist groups feared to be gaining ground. So, Billah has been taking different routes to work. Some of his friends have even bought guard dogs.
Since the murders started, many have left the country, or stopped writing. “Everybody got scared: What should I write? What should I not?” he said.
Even as bloggers like Billah continue to battle extremism online, a new series of targeted murders — including the bombings this past weekend in Dhaka — has threatened to upset Bangladesh’s delicate balance between religion and secularism.
Details were emerging Saturday of another attack on a publisher and two writers at a publishing house in Dhaka. Three of them were rushed to hospital with stab wounds, but details of their conditions were not immediately available. Local media identified one of the victims as Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, a close friend of slain blogger Avijit Roy. In a separate incident on Saturday, Dhaka Tribune reported that Faisal Arefin Dipan, the publisher of Roy’s book, was also slaughtered to death.
Last week, three bombs ripped through Dhaka’s old quarter during a procession marking the Shiite holiday of Ashura. A 14-year-old boy was killed and more than 100 wounded. Another man died in hospital on Thursday. It’s the first time that Shiite Muslims have been targeted in Bangladesh.
The attack, which ISIS claimed responsibility for, comes almost exactly a month after a string of attacks on foreign nationals.
On Sept. 28, an Italian aid worker was shot dead while jogging in the diplomatic area of Dhaka. A few days later, a Japanese man was killed in Rangpur district, in northern Bangladesh. Groups affiliated with ISIS claimed responsibility for both attacks, saying “citizens of crusader nations” would not be safe in Muslim lands.
Dhaka has responded with panic. Western embassies have warned of further threats to foreigners. U.S. diplomats have been banned from attending gatherings at international hotels. Most recently, the Australian cricket team pulled out of a planned tour.
While the Bangladeshi government has sought to play down international terror links, experts on the country’s politics say the string of killings indicates a growing extremist threat.
“These attacks on foreign nationals are really ominous and disconcerting, to say the least,” Ali Riaz, a Bangladesh-born political scientist and writer, said in an email.
“We have been witnessing the deterioration of law and order and regrouping of local militant groups for quite some time. These incidents have demonstrated that it has reached a serious level.”
In recent years, Islamist militancy has been relatively well-contained in Bangladesh, the world’s third-largest Muslim-majority nation. Between 2009 and 2013, the government detained hundreds of militant leaders and their foot soldiers, even executing some of them.
In fact, Bangladesh’s anti-terrorism efforts have been seen as so effective that the U.S. State Department has released reports congratulating the government on its efforts. But security analysts say growing intolerance on both sides of the political divide has failed to stamp out extremism, instead pushing fringe organizations to the fore.
“It is difficult to pigeonhole the group that the perpetrators belong to but the ideological narrative is clear, which is both violently anti-secular and anti-Western,” said Saijan M. Gohel, international security director for the Asia-Pacific Foundation, in an email.
The overcrowded list of extremist entities in Bangladesh includes al-Qaeda in the Indian Sub-Continent, which was launched last year by the group’s new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and has claimed responsibility for some of the bloggers’ murders and identified Bangladesh as a major center for its activities.
And, despite the government’s insistence that ISIS doesn’t exist in Bangladesh, police this year detained several suspected sympathizers.
“ISIS is as much a brand as it is a terrorist group,” said Gohel. “In the last 15 months, there have been a number of lone-wolf plots globally orchestrated by people who have no direct connection to ISIS but are bonded by the ideology and doctrine.”
The once-little-known local outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), which is now linked to the killing of the bloggers, is reported to have ties to both ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Last week, ABT sent threatening emails to news outlets in Dhaka instructing editors to fire their female staffers — under some strict interpretations of Islam, women are not allowed to work — and forbid reporting on atheist bloggers.
http://ahmadiyyatimes.blogspot.com/2015/11/bangladesh-bloggers-murders-shaking.html
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