Samad was hacked by machetes and then shot.
AB Wire
Yet another blogger, postgraduate law student Nazimuddin Samad, 28, of Jagannath University, has been hacked to death by machetes in Bangladesh, on Thursday, in what is now becoming a regular way to brutally curb the voice of secular dissent by hardcore Islamic militants.
Samad was attacked as he was returning from a class at his university in the capital, Dhaka, late on Wednesday, police said.
Last year, suspected militants killed five secular writers and a publisher, including a Bangladeshi American activist. A banned Islamist militant group, Ansarullah Bangla Team, claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, reported Reuters.
Police officer Tapan Chandra Shaha said three or four men attacked Samad with machetes and then shot him after he fell to the ground.
People heard the attackers shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is Greatest) as they fled, he said.
Imran H. Sarker, convener of the BOAN online activist group, said Samad was an outspoken critic of injustice and militancy.
“We found him always a loud voice against all injustice and also a great supporter of secularism,” Sarker told Reuters.
“He was very vocal on issues of religious fundamentalism, war crimes, minority issues, corruption and injustice against women,” Sarker told CNN.
The government denies that Islamic State has a presence in the Muslim-majority country of 160 million people.
Hundreds of students from the Jagannath University protested against his murder and demanded the prompt arrest of the killers. They blocked roads in and around the university and told reporters that if those behind the earlier murders of bloggers had been punished then Samad would not have been attacked, reported BBC.
“Talented youths are killed one after another, but there are no visible measures against these heinous acts,” said Kabir Chowdhury Tanmoy, president of the Online Activist Forum, which advocates secularism.
EU Ambassador to Bangladesh Pierre Mayaudon condemned the killing, saying freedom of expression was a fundamental human right.
CNN reported the murder is certain to add to fears among intellectuals and writers who have dared to challenge religious thought in Bangladesh, a majority Muslim country with a sizable Hindu religious minority.
Friends and supporters took to social media to express their grief, and tributes for, the young writer.
“Rest in Power, Nazimuddin Samad,” one Facebook post said. “There is no end to this brutality.”
Mukto Mona, an English- and Bangladeshi-language website that frequently challenges and criticizes religious beliefs, added its voice to the tributes.
“Nazimuddin was a courageous freethinker; he was vocal in his support for a secular and humane Bangladesh,” the post reads.
“This is terribly shocking,” said Gulam Rabbi Chowdhury, a childhood friend and former high school classmate of Samad. Chowdhury said Samad went into hiding for several months last year because he feared for his life.
Mukto Mona posted excerpts of an exchange between writers who expressed concern for Samad’s safety.
“I am also scared … scared of getting killed,” Samad responded in writing, according to a post published on Mukto Mona, reported CNN.
Bangladesh court hands down death sentences for blogger killing
“But what else can I do? It’s better to die rather than living by keeping my head down.”
Mukto Mona’s founder, a US-based Bangladeshi writer named Avijit Roy, was murdered by machete wielding attackers outside an annual book fair in Dhaka in February 2015.
Press freedoms groups have been sounding the alarm about the campaign of violence against writers in Bangladesh.
“Bangladesh has been ravaged by a spate of bloody attacks on bloggers and other writers who espouse secular viewpoints,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, director of Freedom of Expression Programs at PEN America.
The group urged the US government and other countries to provide shelter to writers at risk of being attacked.
BBC reported there have also been attacks on members of religious minorities, including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians, and Hindus.
Two foreigners, an Italian aid worker and a Japanese man, were also shot dead late last year, in seemingly random attacks.
The so-called Islamic State group has said it carried out many of the attacks – but this has not been independently verified.
Members of another militant Islamist group, the Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), were arrested over an assault on an Italian Catholic priest late last year.