Welcome to H&C,,, where I aggregate news of interest. Primary topics include abuse with "the church", LGBTQI+ issues, cults - including anti-vaxxers, and the Dominionist and Theocratic movements. Also of concern is the anti-science movement with interest in those that promote garbage like homeopathy, chiropractic and the like. I am an atheist and anti-theist who believes religious mythos must be die and a strong supporter of SOCAS.
An American priest who was dismissed from the clergy by the Vatican
after being accused of sexually abusing as many as 30 teenagers in
Bangladesh is still in the country.
William Andrew Christensen, a
priest in the Society of Mary, or Marianists, was removed from the
priesthood in October 2010 after the Vatican judged allegations against
him to be credible.
In January 2011, ucanews.com published a
story quoting Catholic human rights activist Rosaline Costa, who
claimed that Christensen used the Institute of Integrated Rural
Development (IIRD), which he founded in Bogra district in 1987, as a
front to sexually abuse at least 30 Muslim teenagers in rural
Bangladesh.
He was accused of buying the silence of the youngsters, their parents and local political and community leaders.
Christensen
was accused of abusing a pupil at a school in St. Louis, Missouri,
before coming to Bangladesh but a lawsuit filed in 2002 collapsed when
the complainant died.
Christensen is now running the Poverty
Eradication Program, an NGO that he founded in 2012 in Bangladesh.
Interviewed at his office in Dhaka on June 11, he denied all allegations
of sexual abuse and claimed he had been a victim of Vatican injustice.
I bring all that up because Bangladeshi police may have found Tutul’s
assailant. The police made headlines last week when they rounded up at least 3,000 people (some estimates say 8,000) suspected of being Islamic radicals. One of those suspects has now been charged with carrying out the attack on Tutul,,,
__
And it continues, first Avijit Roy, continuing with Washiqur Rahman, Ananta Bijoy Das, and then Niloy Neel. Sadly now, Faisal Arefin Dipon; publisher of some of Roy’s books as head of the Jagriti Prakashani publishing house.
Three
bloggers and writers, including the publisher of Shuddhashar
Prokashani, Ahmedur Rashid Tutul, have been hacked in the capital's
Lalmatia area.
Shuddhashar Prokashani published slain writer-blogger Avijit Roy's book Shunya Theke Mahabishwa and the publisher reportedly received death threat after the brutal murder of Avijit. Tutul has written two poetry books--Durbalataguchchha, Mrita Ghorhar Hresha.
Two other injured bloggers-writers are--Sudeep Kumar Ray Barman, who writes under the name of Ranadipam Basu, and Tareq Rahim.
The Friendly Atheist has a nice write up with responses from the Center For Inquiry-US, Centre For Inquiry-Canada and the American Humanist Association.
If you do not speak out against the extremism you condone it, it is no longer fringe when it is occurs in our everyday life. Religion (all religion) must be eliminated from the public sphere.
This involves removing yourself from your comfort zones. Displace
yourself within circles you don’t normally frequent. Read and
intermingle with queer, disabled, black and brown voices who share their
thoughts, observations, experiences, and their grasp on the cultural
context of their social relegation and erasure.
Books like God Is Not Great, The End of Faith, and The God Delusion are
well-known, widely read, and often cited among nonbelievers. But how
many have perused Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels, Why I Am
Not a Muslim, The Ebony Exodus Project, or Writing God’s Obituary? What
about books not geared towards atheism like What Does It Mean To Be
White?, Sister Outsider, Critical Race Theory, or Between The World and
Me? How many frequent the blogs or social media of transmen or
transwomen who openly discuss their lived experiences or ex-Muslims not
associated with “the establishment” that tenaciously tackle many
manifestations of social inequalities like Kiran Opal, Sadaf Ali, and
Heina Dadabhoy?
America has lost any semblance of biblical thinking, and this is clearly showing up in the laws and regulations that are being established. Sinful behaviors are being applauded and protected in the courts, and those who choose to disagree with sinful lifestyles are being punished for refusing to condone or accommodate these choices. As our culture continues to reject God’s Word and do what’s right in its own eyes, we can only expect things like this to increase.
As Christians, we need to stand firmly and lovingly on God’s Word. In a culture that has utterly rejected our Creator’s words, it’s more important than ever that we stand boldly on God’s unchanging Word and speak truth,,,
As I approached adulthood, and began to meet people from different
backgrounds, with different beliefs, faith faded and gave way to doubt.
I’d always been a curious person, but my youthful shyness and anxiety,
combined with my insular upbringing, kept me mostly isolated from the
world beyond family and church. It wasn’t until I entered the workforce,
and then attended junior college, that I discovered the wider world,
one of dazzling variety, and found it suited my personality to a T. ,,,
Many religions, including the brand of fundamentalist Catholicism in
which I was raised, lead many adherents to restrict the education of
their children to a cherry-picked, often distorted or flat-out-wrong,
circumscribed array of ideas, scientific theories, and historical
accounts that accord with the doctrines of their faith. Many of these
children remain ignorant of the wider world of human thought and history
until something in their experience or personality compels them to look
beyond the teachings of their youth. For example, my own dear
grandmother, out of love but misguided by her piety, did a disservice to
the education of her grandchildren by attempting, and in some cases
succeeding, to restrict our education in this way. Her religious beliefs
led to her conviction that a broad, liberal education offered too many
temptations to disbelief, so she felt compelled keep us from learning
anything other than that which would accord with her fundamentalist
Catholic faith. As I later discovered, she was right, not for the
reasons she thought. Truth, in my opinion, holds fast in the face of
challenges; it does not give way as easily as error does. Each new thing
I learned, then, was not a temptation: it was a window of opportunity
for growing in understanding, and for replacing bad ideas with better
ones. Fortunately, I inherited, and was inspired by, her adventurous
side, her love of people. Over time, I encountered and fell in love with
the wider world of ideas, through the people I came to meet and the
broader education I eventually received.
The refusal of hospitals to allow doctors to perform basic health
procedures based solely on religious doctrine presents a real threat to a
woman’s ability to access health care. Patients seeking medical care
from public institutions should not have to worry that religious
doctrine rather than medical judgment will dictate what care they
receive.
The chart breaks down every
death in the 20th century, including those caused by ideology.
Communism, fascism, democracy, Ba'athism and even Catholicism all make
the ideology breakdown but atheism does not. That's because Hitler,
Stalin, and Mao were not motivated by atheism.
If there is an
omnipotent god, one that can end disease and cancer, he's got a lot to
answer for. Also, this is just a really cool chart. Yes, I am a nerd.
I do not how else to preface the following other than to sa just read it. Thank you to Matthew Facciani for sharing.
This is a piece written by Farid Ahmed, a friend of murdered secular blogger Ananta Bijoy Das. Ahmed is the current moderator of Avijit Roy’s Mukto-Mona website.
The following is a harrowing account of how dangerous it is to simply
write about secular issues in Bangladesh. More people need to learn what
life can be like for these brave writers. We need to put pressure
on the Bangladeshi government to protect all of their people and end
these horrific events. So please consider sharing Ahmed’s article here
and especially sharing the petition below to protect Bangladeshi
bloggers. This article was translated from Bangla to English by Riasat
Ahsan. _____
Just a month and a half ago, when
the founder of the Mukto-Mona blog, popular science author, and
rationalist Avijit Roy was savagely hacked to death with machetes on his
way back from a book fair, Ananta Bijoy Das felt grief accompanied by a
chill of fear running down his spine. It wasn’t just him; all the
Bangladeshi rationalist writers felt uneasiness. Then, just one month
later when Washiqur Rahman Babu was also attacked in the middle of the
day, in front of scores of people and murdered in the same brutal
manner, the fear turned into intense panic. The panic caused many to
stop writing or hide behind pseudonyms, and some to lose enthusiasm and
only make irregular appearances in the world of writing.
Ananta was no exception. He was also gripped by panic following the
murders of Avijit Roy and Washiqur Rahman. He knew that he was unsafe
during this turbulent time of hostilities. He maintained a low profile
and covered his tracks as best as he could and started living a kind of
“life on the run.” Such a life, however, is not for a normal human
being. One cannot remain healthy with the constant anxiety and fear of
malicious attacks and an untimely death. Therefore, like many others,
Ananta was attempting to go abroad as soon as possible. Doing so would
mean leaving behind his beloved country, his dearest parents, and his
brothers and sisters. Even so, at least he would be able to heave a sigh
of relief, and live his life in freedom. This was the motivation
behind his resolve to leave the country. He wrote to many places and
asked several people to write recommendation letters for him to aid his
departure. I was one of them.
But matters are not restricted to America or Bangladesh. Saudi Arabia
has decided that the “crime” of being an atheist is so grave, that—no joke—atheism has been officially declared a terrorism offense. Meanwhile, free-thinking blogger and Nobel Prize nominee Raif Badawi
has been accused of atheism and sentenced to 10 years in prison with
1,000 lashes, 50 of which have been executed. To put the boot in, the
Saudis decided to convict his lawyer, too, my friend the liberal Muslim Walid Abulkhair.
And Egyptian atheists have it bad too, whether before or after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government there in the summer of 2013.
,,,
So beleaguered is this minority that you can be put to death for atheism in no less than 13 countries
around the world today. In 39 countries the law mandates a prison
sentence for blasphemy, and six of these are Western countries. Iceland
maintains a jail sentence for up to three months; in Denmark it is up to
four months; in New Zealand it stretches to up to a year; in Poland up
to two years; and in Germany and Greece it is up to three years. Some of
you may get through this article and still not feel that those who
dissent from the religious identity of their birth are among the most
discriminated against in most countries of the world today. But that would only prove my point.
Let
there be no mistake. There is a bloody war being waged on atheism. And
it is time for us all—especially we liberals and Muslims—to show some of
that solidarity we rightly expect from others.
,,,
One initiative among others stands out as an attempt to provide the sort
of direct support that these modern-day children of Galileo require. Movements.org
is a platform that represents a fundamental shift in how human rights
work is done today. The old human rights model of writing revelatory
reports, and lobbying governments to act on them, rested on the
assumption that information about abuse was simply not available. In
modern times, the Internet has ensured that the problem is not a lack of
information. The need of the day is to cultivate and connect activists
with the support and technical skills they need on the ground. By acting
as a platform through which dissenters can post their “needs” they can
reach supporters, such as lawyers or tech-experts, who may offer their
in-kind services. Movements.org, which works in partnership with The Daily Beast, represents a third way to undercut both dictators and Islamists by cultivating genuinely independent, free-thinking voices.
A string of slayings claimed by radical Islamic groups has Bangladesh
scrambling to contain what appears to be a rising tide of extremism, and
it couldn't have come at a worse time — the country's fragile economic
growth is faltering this year amid renewed political unrest.
The secular South Asian nation —
traditionally moderate even if unstable at times — has repeatedly
insisted it has religious radicalism in check and is maintaining peace
among its 160 million people. That claim was severely tested this week
after an Italian aid worker became the fifth person to be killed this
year in attacks claimed by extremist groups.
A
foreigner being gunned down in the country's capital is bad news for
Bangladesh, whose economy is heavily reliant on a $25 billion garment
industry that produces clothing and fashion wear for international
brands including Zara, Benetton and Gap.
Hassan
Shariar, a well-known political commentator and columnist, said even
though the government won't acknowledge it, there clearly are pockets of
radical Islam in the country.
"I
don't know why intelligence (agencies) failed to understand that things
are going out of control," he said. "It is clearly evident ... that
they are failing to contain it with an iron hand."
,,,
Then on Monday, three motorcycle-riding assailants gunned down the
Italian aid worker, Cesare Tavella, in the diplomatic quarter of Dhaka.
The Sunni extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility and vowed
more such killings in Muslim-majority countries.
The government dismissed the IS claim, saying there was no evidence. It described the killing as an "isolated incident."
"There is no existence of the Islamic State here," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said Tuesday.
There's been a series of violent murders of Bangladeshi internet
bloggers, accused of being atheists by Islamist groups - with four
killed so far this year. In the videos and stories below, you can meet
the people living through this situation.
“Our weapon is [the] pen, and we can use it without hurting anybody. We
just want to make people conscious about their rights. So that nobody
can use them to fulfill bad intentions.”
Ananya Azad
An Islamic militant group in Bangladesh
has issued a hitlist of secular bloggers, writers and activists around
the world, saying they will be killed if its demands are not met.
The list will raise fears that Islamic militant violence within the
unstable south Asian country could take on an international dimension.
The targets in the list include nine bloggers based in the UK, seven
in Germany, two in the US, one in Canada and one in Sweden. Some are
Bangladeshi citizens living overseas. Others are dual nationals or
citizens of the western nations.
The list was issued in a statement on the internet by the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a group that has been blamed for a series of murders of bloggers and activists
in Bangladesh over the last 18 months. All those killed have been
prominent critics of extremist religious doctrines, especially in Islam.
The acting leader of the ABT and two close associates were arrested earlier this month in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on suspicion of involvement in the murder of a secular blogger earlier this year.
Individuals on the new list have told the Guardian they intend to keep writing and blogging.
“Our weapon is [the] pen, and we can use it without hurting anybody.
We just want to make people conscious about their rights. So that nobody
can use them to fulfill bad intentions,” said Ananya Azad, a
Bangladeshi blogger who has been forced into exile in Europe and is on
the list.
There has been no previous indication that the ABT was targeting
bloggers overseas and the list will worry security authorities in Europe
and the US.
Ali asks a pertinent question surrounding Raif's plight and the non-action of many world powers including the UN, "Who will do it?" In some regards, it addresses a point Raif's wife, Ensaf, had to gracefully side-step in her VICE interview regarding Canada's trade relationship with Saudi, "Raif's
cause has nothing to do with issues of political or economic exchanges
between states, it is an exclusively humanitarian cause."
Ali gives an important answer as well,,,
That leaves the Nobel committee. At times, the Peace Prize has been
given not just to recognize people's achievements, but also to pressure
them to do better. Giving Raif the prize would do both. It would
recognize the efforts of all those around the world who have been jailed
or killed this year for intrepidly speaking out in places where it's
needed the most. And it would also send a strong message to Saudi Arabia
from the rest of the civilized world -- a message that neither the
U.S., the U.N., or any other Western country has yet had the courage to
properly convey.
It really has been a notorious year for writers,
cartoonists, bloggers, and journalists. They haven't just been
censored, but imprisoned, publicly whipped, massacred in cold blood, and
hacked to death with machetes. They need to know how much the rest of
us value their contributions, sacrifices, and courage.
By going up against the Saudis' human rights abuses and free speech restrictions, Raif Badawi has done what even Barack Obama won't do. Yet, of the two, it is Obama who has a Nobel Peace Prize.
This year, the Nobel committee needs to change that.
An internet law in Bangladesh
has had a "chilling effect" on society, the UN's Special Rapporteur on
freedom of religion said Wednesday after a nine-day visit to the
country, as he warned of rising religious extremism.
Under
Bangladesh's Internet Act, any person who deliberately publishes
material deemed to hurt religious beliefs, offend the state or damage
law and order can be jailed for 14 years.
The
law has been used to imprison several high-profile journalists and
social media users in the Muslim-majority nation in recent months.
"This
law has a chilling effect on civil society organisations, human rights
activists and members of religious minority communities," rapporteur
Heiner Bielefeldt told reporters in the capital Dhaka.
The
UN rapporteur's visit came in the wake of four murders of atheist
bloggers by suspected Islamic militants this year and mounting concern
over shrinking press freedom and human rights abuses.
Bangladesh police Tuesday charged five suspected Islamist militants
with murder over the killing of an atheist blogger, one of four secular
writers hacked to death this year for writing against fundamentalists.
Police
brought the charges — the first in any of the four murders this year
— in a Dhaka magistrates court, which will now decide whether to open a
trial or order further investigations.
"We've submitted a charge sheet against five people for the murder of
blogger Washiqur Rahman. The five were charged with murder," Dhaka
police spokesman Muntashirul Islam told AFP.
"They
include an organiser of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) and four others
who are its supporters," he said, referring to a banned local Islamist
militant group which police have blamed in all four murders.
Washiqur Rahman, 27, an atheist blogger who wrote under a pen name on
Facebook against religious fundamentalism — especially Islam and
Islamist radicals — was killed near his home in Dhaka in March.
Niloy
Neel, the last blogger to be killed, knew that his life was in danger.
After his murder, it has been learnt that he went to the police seeking
protection. But instead of giving him protection, the police advised him
to go abroad. It has also been learned that Niloy told others about
this matter on May 15.
When are we ever going to learn that, sometimes, making things public
instead of keeping them secret can ensure protection? The friends of
Niloy who knew were probably concerned about him, but what about the
possibility that if they had made the matter public, could Niloy’s life
could have been saved? After Ananta was killed, we came to know that he
had been trying but had failed to go abroad. His friends knew this.
But there is no reason to feel upset that those friends failed to
create a security cordon around him. The machete is filling up the gap
created by our inability to form solidarity. The quicker you realise
that, the better it will be.
“My best friend, my husband is gone. How can I survive in a conservative
society like this where I am not safe because I am a woman?” she says.
“I want to leave. I don’t want to die here.”
__
The day he was hacked to death with a
butcher’s blade, Niloy Chatterjee slept in. Muslims in Bangladesh were
preparing for Friday morning prayers but Mr. Chatterjee, an outspoken
atheist, had no such demands on his time. He rose at 11 a.m. and walked
to a nearby vegetable market while his wife of two years, Asa Moni,
scrubbed pots at home.
He returned with potatoes and salt, sweaty
from the humidity that drenches Dhaka in the final weeks of the rainy
season. He showered, then sat down on his bed with his laptop.
Moments later, he was dead.
,,,
Such writings were controversial even among fellow atheists.
“They
were a bit irresponsible,” Mr. Alam said. “You cannot change a society
that doesn’t trust you, that hates you, that wants to kill you.”
Mr.
Alam has sought to bridge religious differences to enable dialogue. He
desires a country “where people are more tolerant about each other’s
views.”
Still, the blogger deaths have
scared him. He recently installed a welded metal gate at the foot of his
stairs and two dogs now stand guard outside his room.
“After Niloy was killed in his home, I got a bit paranoid,” he says.
,,,
For Ms. Asa Moni, hope is far from mind.
For three nights after Mr. Chatterjee died, she screamed into the
darkness, plagued by images of the attack.
The
knock on the door came as her husband tapped at his computer. She
opened the door to a strange man who said the landlord had sent him to
look at the apartment.
The man was
perhaps 20 years old, thin and dressed in a black T-shirt and blue
jeans. He walked around twice, then stood in front of the kitchen and
began mashing buttons on his mobile phone.
Moments later, three people barged into the apartment, brandishing a gleaming chapati,
a rectangular cleaver made to splinter bone. They said nothing, instead
moving straight toward Mr. Chatterjee, who had come to the bedroom
door.
With their first swing, they severed parts of one hand. Chunks of his fingers fell to the floor.
“Who
are you guys?” was all Mr. Chatterjee could manage before an attacker
brandishing a pistol pushed Ms. Asa Moni onto the apartment’s veranda.
“Save us! Save us!” she screamed.
But
the attack was viciously efficient. The men left within minutes, Mr.
Chatterjee’s head almost completely severed from his body.
Police in Bangladesh's northern Rajshahi district arrested six tribal
Santal Catholics on Aug. 26 for allegedly beating a woman to death in
the name of "releasing her from an evil spirit" inside a local Catholic
Church.
The suspects allegedly took Fulmoni Mardi, 60, into St. John Mary
Vianney Church in Mundumala on the night of Aug. 25 and beat her to
"free her from the spell of an evil spirit," a police official said.
"The woman is a victim of superstition and maltreatment. We found
serious injuries on her body which caused her death," said Anwar
Hossain, officer in-charge at Tanore police station, which covers
Mundumala.
"We have arrested six people after the victim’s daughter Shefali
Hembrom filed a murder case. We will arrest more people for
investigation and interrogation if necessary," the officer added.
The woman’s family members and relatives said they took her to the
group as local villagers had talked about their miraculous healing
power.
,,,
The parish priest, Father Michael Corraya, said he was asleep when
people came to the church with the woman and beat her to death. The
priest denied backing the group but admitted that he "partially"
believed in their healing power.
"I have heard from people that they were healing people, because we
do use charismatic prayers and Holy Water to heal sick people. But I
never thought these people would go to such extremes," said
Father Corraya.
The incident shows a challenging reality for the Catholic Church in
the tribal-majority Dinajpur and Rajshahi dioceses of northern
Bangladesh.
Thousands of tribal people, including Santals, were converted to
Christianity after 1904 by European missionaries. However, traditional
belief and superstitions are still common among the mostly poor and
illiterate tribal people, said Father Harun Hembrom, secretary of the
diocesan Justice and Peace Commission in Rajshahi and a tribal Santal
himself.
The gist of the original story and what caught my eye,,,
A woman accused of tossing her newborn son to his death from a
fourth-floor window told police an evil spirit had taken over the boy,
according to court papers Monday.
Rashida Chowdhury, 21, was being held without bail after her arrest late last week in the death of her month-old son, Rizwan.
Chowdhury initially told detectives that she had been asleep in the
bed with her son and awoke to discover he was gone, but she later
admitted she threw him out the window, police said. She said that he had
been possessed by an evil spirit and had been sick recently, and she
was "stopping the pain," according to court papers.
The baby had been hospitalized for three days with a viral infection,
but had been discharged the day before his death and was recovering,
officials said. He appeared to be in good health otherwise.
Investigators were trying to determine whether Chowdhury suffered
from postpartum depression but no clinical diagnoses had been made.
But,,,
This story is more than just and individual with possible aberrant religious ideations combined with mental illness.
Beyond those stark facts, little is publicly known about the case or
what led to the baby’s death early in the morning on Aug. 7. Still, the
episode has resonated deeply among social service providers and
advocates who have been trying to address mental health problems, particularly among women, in the growing Bangladeshi population in New York City.
Normally I would just toss this story into the evidence pile of religion hurts. I don't think I can rightly do that in this case. As Semple explains,
“The women are becoming victims of everything,” said Rokeya Akhter, a Bangladeshi immigrant who leads the New American Women’s Forum of New York,
a group that seeks to empower Bangladeshi immigrant women. “The women
come to this country with an American dream in their minds and the
situation sometimes is totally different. Women are going through so
much frustration and they become depressed.”
The
Bangladeshi population — with significant concentrations in the Jackson
Heights, Elmhurst and Jamaica neighborhoods of Queens — has been one of
the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the city over the past few
decades. It now numbers about 76,000, up from about 2,000 in 1980,
making it the ninth largest foreign-born group in the city, according to
the latest census data.
It
is also among the poorest, with poverty and overcrowding rates that are
among the highest compared with those of the city’s other large
immigrant groups.
Many
new Bangladeshi immigrants — and even some who have been here for many
years — speak little or no English, further worsening the challenges of
integration, advocates and community leaders say.
Arranged
marriages are also common, with brides either sent to join their
husbands in the United States or traveling with their spouses from
Bangladesh.
“A lot of the women are older and come with husbands,” said Alison Karasz, executive director of Sapna NYC,
a group based in the Bronx that is focused on the social, economic and
health-related needs of South Asian women. “But sometimes young girls
come and don’t know their husbands.”
I am in no way condoning or excusing what mom did here. Chowdhury commited a crime no matter what the circumstances. Killing is wrong period, foreign culture or not. What the NYTimes did, was remind me that things are always so black and white when media throws out a term like "demon(s)".
To understand what’s happening in Bangladesh now—both the violence
and the anemic response from the west—we need to look at some history.
In 1971, as West Pakistan violently cracked down on Bengali
nationalists in East Pakistan clamoring for independence, Washington,
D.C. remained silent. U.S. Consul General in Dhaka Archer Blood
repeatedly urged President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger to intervene.
Nixon and Kissinger, as Gary Bass would later recount in The Blood Telegram,
were so anti-India that they ignored what would become one of the 20th
century’s forgotten genocides: the killing of over three million
Bengalis (including many Hindus) and the displacement of more than 10
million.
Among those who left what would become Bangladesh was Rukhsana Hasib, a young secular Muslim whose father—an East Pakistan military officer—was killed by West Pakistani forces.
,,,
For years, beneath the loud and proud rhetoric of Bengali unity,
Bangladesh has been increasingly radicalized, particularly in rural
areas and villages just outside of major cities such as Dhaka and
Chittagong. Even under the nominally secular Awami League, land-grabs
against groups such as Hindus and indigenous tribes have gone up, and
authorities have done little to deter violence led by Islamist groups
and their allies. Now, religious minorities, atheists, and secular
Muslims are now firmly in the crosshairs of an emboldened collection of
radical groups.
,,,
The lack of U.S. involvement in Bangladesh is multi-fold. Though the
country is a trade partner with the United States, it lacks the
strategic significance of its South Asian neighbors India and Pakistan.
Additionally, the attacks against the bloggers are often presented in
U.S. media without context. Perhaps more problematically, many
Bangladeshis, particularly those living in more upscale parts of Dhaka,
the capital city, have largely been shielded from the creeping extremism
taking place throughout the country.
So there has been progress on three of the assassinations, good,,,
Authorities in Bangladesh said Tuesday that they have
arrested three men, including a British citizen, for their involvement
in the murders of two secular bloggers.
The three are suspected members of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, a
banned Islamic militant outfit, said Maj. Maksudul Alam, a spokesman for
the country's Rapid Action Battalion. Bangladesh banned the group in
May after police accused its members of threatening and killing bloggers
and writers.
Alam said one of the arrested men, Touhidur Rahman — a British
citizen of Bangladeshi origin — was the mastermind and financier of the
attacks on bloggers Avijit Roy and Ananta Bijoy Das, who were killed
earlier this year.
The suspects were arrested Monday night in raids in Dhaka,
Bangladesh's capital, and appeared with authorities at a news briefing
Tuesday.
Mufti Mahmud Khan, the head of the battalion's media wing, told
reporters that while Rahman was the main planner of the killings,
another suspect who was arrested, Sadek Ali, acted as a bridge to
communicate with Mufti Jasim Rahmani, the alleged head of the militant
group. Ali, 28, became involved with Rahmani while working as a printing
press worker, Khan said.
So this is definte progress on Neel's assassination,,,
Bangladesh police say they have
arrested two suspected members of a banned Islamist group over the
killing of atheist blogger Niloy Neel.
The two men were suspected
members of Ansarullah Bangla Team, a militant group accused of links to
previous attacks on bloggers, police said.
Mr Neel was hacked to death by a gang armed with machetes at his home in the capital Dhaka last week.
It was the fourth such killing of a secular blogger this year.
Police say the two men being held are key suspects in Mr Neel's murder.
Mr Neel's attackers had tricked their way into his home by saying they were looking to rent a flat.
Bangladesh is officially secular but critics say the government is indifferent to attacks on bloggers by Islamist militants.
The 3 following posts concern the assassinations of the secular Bangladeshi writers over the course of the past years or so. Because investigative details are sketchy along with the possible overlap in suspects, I not sure which story goes to which writer. The one commonality is the extremist group Ansar Al Bangla (Ansarullah Bangla Team).
Detectives
yesterday started extensive surveillance on three suspects for their
involvement in the murder of Niladri Chatterjee, who was killed on
Friday at his Goran flat allegedly in the hands of radical Islamists.
The trio were identified based on statements of the wife of the slain
secularist writer, neighbours and locals, and also by analysing the
post-mortem and the inquest reports.
To confirm their identities, the detectives have sent a blood-stained
towel and a red T-shirt collected from the ground floor of the building
to the forensic department of Dhaka Medical College for DNA test.
They also collected Niloy’s teeth from the flat and sent those for examination.
Investigators said that the eight major stab injuries, found on Niloy’s body, were made by a left-handed killer.
During primary investigation, the detectives have also found that the
email claiming responsibilities for the murder was sent to different
media outlets after the killing from a laptop based in Hathazari area of
Chittagong.
A group named Ansar Al Bangla sent the email, signed by its
spokesperson Mufti Abdullah Ashraf. High officials of the Detective
Branch of police have said that it was a fake name.
Bangladeshi authorities, the local law enforcement officials, have issued a solution to the "problem" of atheist bloggers being hacked to death:
Terming hurting one's religious sentiment as crime, Inspector General
of Police (IGP) has advised the free thinkers not to hurt religious
sentiment in their writings.
IGP AKM Shahidul Haque said: “According to laws if any one hurts one's feelings, he will be punished by the law.”
Advising the free thinkers, IGP said: “None should cross the limit.”
According to Penal Code and ICT Act, hurting one's religious
sentiment is a crime and according to the law one might be punished for
14 years for such offense, said the police chief.
The IGP held a press briefing at Police Headquarters in Dhaka on
Sunday afternoon in the wake of criticism against police following the
brutal killing of blogger Niladri Chatterjee NIloy.
If only those atheists stopped criticizing religion,,sigh!!
