Pakistan removes New York Times’ international edition report on bloggers killed in Bangladesh

An article on the killing of Bangladeshi bloggers has been removed by the Pakistani printers of the international edition of The New York Times.

The censorship left swathes of white spaces on the paper’s pages 1 and 2, reports the UK's The Independent newspaper on its web edition.

The New York Time’s international edition is printed in various countries for local distribution.

The newspaper clarified that its printing partner in Pakistan had removed the article and that it was not an editorial decision.

The article - ‘Imperilled bloggers of Bangladesh’ - by The New York Times freelance correspondent Joshua Hammer focused on the brutal attacks on and murders of a group of Bangladeshi bloggers advocating gender equality, human rights and civil liberty and opposing – online – Islamic fundamentalists.

The Pakistan correspondent of The New York Times tweeted two versions of the paper—the international e-paper containing the article and the paper’s physical version printed in Pakistan without it.

The blasphemy law in Pakistan provides for the capital punishment for any criticism of Islam.

The New York Times' international edition which had the article on the killings of Bangladeshi bloggers.

At the heart of the piece was Asif Mohiuddin, who had to flee Bangladesh after his free thinking, atheist views and secular blogging put him in severe danger.

After the attack on Mohiuddin, blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was hacked to death in 2013.

In the past two years, bloggers Avijit Roy, Ananta Bijoy Das, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu and Niladri Chatterjee Niloy, and publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan have been hacked to death.

Investigations have pointed to the involvement of Islamist militants in the killings.

Some of those arrested are said to have confessed that the previous branding of the bloggers as ‘anti-Islamic’ had served as a motivation for the murders.