The Bangladesh Blogger Murders Our World

I remember talking to Avijit, walking out the book fair,

We were getting out of the car, walking.

What I remember next is that I am soaked in blood.

In February this year, on this spot, a group of men attacked Avijit Roy

She survived, but he was cut and slashed so much

Avijit Roy was a vocal atheist, and his name was on a list

of 84 bloggers who Islamists here accused of blasphemy.

Four bloggers have been murdered so far this year.

This is the story of what is happening to a small

but highly visible clique of atheist and secular bloggers, who

are opposing religious doctrine in this predominantly Muslim country.

These are the faces of Bangladeshi bloggers, all murdered this year.

Some had used the internet to criticise or even

Others had argued that God has no place in politics.

Of the four hacked to death this year, the best-known was Avijit Roy.

This photograph of Avijit and his wife Bonya Ahmed was taken just

It is one of the last pictures of them.

I have four head wounds. in some kind of vehicle.

They are like six, seven, eight-inch machete wounds, and one

Like, my hands were cut so badly I had to

go through four hours of surgery, to repair the nerves and arteries.

The couple, who were born in Bangladesh, were visiting from

their home in the United States to take part in the book fair, despite

warnings that Avijit's atheist writings had made him a marked man.

An Islamist extremist had written this message on his Facebook page.

When Avijit Roy was killed, Rahman was arrested.

He remains in custody, although many believe he is more

Thousands marched in protest against Avijit Roy's murder.

The killing of such a high-profile writer

Attention turned to the writings which had provoked

Articles and books critical of religion, with titles like

But Roy is not the only Bangladeshi blogger to have been murdered

for online posts which some Muslims found offensive.

So far this year, a total of four have been killed, all attacked

After Roy's murder, another atheist blogger, Washiqur

Rahman, posted the hashtag I am Avijit Roy, to protest the killing.

A month later he was attacked in a busy street in Dhaka.

This pattern of horror was repeated, with two more murders

of atheist bloggers, Ananta Bijoy and Niloy Neel.

Bangladesh is a secular country with a long

Its 160 million people are predominantly Muslim,

But that has always sat beside a long tradition of separation

To understand how that balance has been upset,

Tensions between conservative Islam and secular Bangladeshi society came

Thousands poured onto the streets of Dhaka to demonstrate

against what they saw as the rising influence of Islamist parties.

Secular bloggers played a high-profile role in the protests.

I met one of the secular bloggers at the site of the protests.

Filling up the streets, all the roads were crowded.

It was very different, it was a magical time.

The ideas circulating during it, the demand to keep religion out

of politics, and even the liberal spirit of the protests, were

The challenge to you is that, in a way, what you did here was

You stood up against Islamic parties.

You behaved in a very liberal way, which shocked people, and sort

And what happened next was the first murder of a Bangladeshi

atheist blogger, two years before Avijit Roy was killed.

Rajib Haider, also known as Thaba Baba, used to

He was killed by machete, and five students confessed to his murder.

Suddenly, atheist and secular bloggers were

One protester invited me to his home, where he said he could

But when I knew that Thaba Baba was dead, I remember that

The problem was, many of those texts were not a huge problem.

But when those texts went into every corner of this country,

you know, and every village, then actually the whole thing changed.

What happened is the bloggers were heroes first, then

The streets of Dhaka filled up again.

But this time, it wasn't secular protesters.

It was Islamists, demanding that atheist bloggers be arrested

The authorities cracked down, and the demonstrations ended with

a violent stand-off between police and protesters.

The movement against atheist bloggers has been

led by Hefazat-e-Islam, the protectors of the Islamic faith.

It is an organisation which isn't an Islamic party,

very much based in the madrasas, or Islamic schools, that it runs.

Hefazat-e-Islam is big and grassroots.

They have thousands of madrasas across Bangladesh, educating boys,

For years, the seminarians never intervened in politics.

But the rise of atheist blogging spurred them into demanding that

Mohammed Zafarullah Khan led the charge out of the madrasas.

What did you think when you read what

I understand that what they said offended Islamic belief.

But in a democracy, shouldn't they be able to say whatever they like?

Hefazat-e-Islam condemns the killings

and says it had no part in them, insisting it is the government's

But the organisation did help make a list of bloggers accused

of insulting Islam, which it presented to the government.

Leaked to the media, that list has essentially become a hit list.

All of the murdered bloggers appear on it.

What is it like to be on that list and still be alive?

Some have left Bangladesh but others remain, living in fear.

They keep a low profile and stay mostly in their homes.

He writes under the pen-name Sobak, which means Active Voice.

He has been identified on the now infamous list six times under

different aliases and his face even appeared on a banner at a march

And it is not just fear for his own life.

He is the father of two young children.

The strain on his family is taking a toll.

I don't think anyone would blame you if you had a panic attack or

Who exactly is it that he should fear?

No-one knows for certain but clandestine Islamist groups

have claimed responsibility for some of the murders.

The Bangladeshi authorities suspect a local group which they believe

Police have recently arrested members of Ansarullah Bangla Team.

Fighting terrorism in Bangladesh is primarily the job

VOICE-OVER: They are the pride of the nation...

I visited their headquarters to speak to

At this stage, you believe these groups, one of

them has been named as Ansarullah Bangla Team, you believe they are

We don't think that we should be confining our security concerns

This is international Islamist terror?

We are not living in a world where there are only national boundaries.

The scale of the challenge, do you look at what is happening

in Iraq and Syria with Islamic State and worry that some of that

We should always take precautions for that.

We should take proper measures so that it does not affect my country.

We cannot keep our fingers crossed until it comes to our country.

No, we have to be proactive and watchful

Police have told the media that Ansarullah Bangla

Team, the group they have cracked down on, now plan more murders

The most recent blogger to be killed was Niloy Neel, who was

His online comments on religion were biting and often mocking.

He shared a photo of a bombing in Afghanistan with a comment.

VOICE-OVER READING: No-one has claimed responsibility yet.

However, you can bet your bottom dollar it was a devout

That evening, attackers got into his home

and hacked him to death while his family was locked in another room.

Avijit Roy's father is still trying to come to terms with the

death of his son, the first atheist blogger to be murdered this year.

For Avijit Roy, atheism was a family tradition.

His father founded a rationalist magazine.

It was Avijit Roy's ability to turn it into a successful online blog

that won him fame internationally as a writer

but he missed his family and decided to visit Bangladesh

Do you have any regret about Avijit and what happened?

How do you feel now about his killers?

What makes Bangladesh perhaps unique among Muslim countries is that here,

for all the intimidation and killing,

atheism has found some very vocal champions.

Drawing on a tradition of Bengali secular culture,

These killers have gotten a free pass.

They think they can do whatever they want to.

But there is also a very strong force in Bangladesh

The weather is going to turn a bit calmer for the last day of 2015. We

are not going to get those raging gales and lashings of rain. In fact,

for many of us first thing in the morning on New