Bangladeshis protest after atheist writer Avijit Roy hacked to death

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Dhaka in protest at the murder of a prominent secular American blogger of Bangladeshi origin who was hacked to death with machetes after he allegedly received threats from Islamists.

Avijit Roy and his wife, Rafida Ahmed, were attacked on a crowded pavement as they were returning from a book fair at Dhaka University. Ahmed, who is also a blogger, lost a finger and remains under treatment at the Square hospital in Dhaka.

The attack took place at about 8.45pm on Thursday evening when a group of men ambushed the couple as they walked toward a roadside tea stall, with at least two of the attackers hitting them with meat cleavers. The attackers then ran off into the crowds. Two blood-stained cleavers were found after the attack, said police.

A tweet from Ansar Bangla 7, a previously unknown fundamentalist group, said: “Anti-Islamic blogger US-Bengali citizen Avijit Roy is assassinated in capital #Dhaka due to his crime against #Islam.”

Roy, founder of the Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog, which featured articles on scientific reasoning and religion, had been receiving threats for some time. A Facebook posting this month said that he would be killed once he arrived in the capital. The couple arrived in Dhaka on 15 February.

“There have been Facebook posts stating Avijit Roy cannot be killed because he lives in America. He would be killed when he arrives in Dhaka. They must have followed his movement,” Ajoy Roy, Avijit’s father, told the Guardian. He criticised the police for failing to act despite being allegedly just metres away from the scene of the attack.

Police said the murder was being given high priority and had been referred to the detective branch.

“This is being treated as a highly important and sensitive case, which is why the case has been handed to the detective branch,” said Shibly Noman, assistant police commissioner of the Dhaka metropolitan police.

Several hundred people – including teachers, publishers and fellow writers – joined a rally on Friday near the site of the attack carrying banners saying: “We want justice” and “Down with fundamentalism”.

Imran Sarker, head of the Bangladesh bloggers’ association, said the protests would not let up unless those responsible for Roy’s killing were caught. “Avijit’s killing once again proved that there is a culture of impunity in the country,” Sarker told Agence France-Presse. “The government must arrest the killers in 24 hours or face non-stop protests.”

Roy, who was 42, had been a target of extremist groups for at least five years because of his writings on secular and lesbian and gay issues in his columns and blogs, his father said. “There isn’t one specific writing I can think of which caused this attack on him,” he added.

Roy, a mechanical engineer, was a regular columnist of the Bangladeshi news agency bdnews24.com. He wrote about 10 books, including the best-selling Biswasher Virus (Virus of Faith), as well as his blog, which championed liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority nation.

“His murder only highlights the point, being made consistently by many, that much more needed to be done to protect these people and the state has been failing to do its job,” said Toufique Imrose Khalidi, editor of bdnews24.com.

Roy is the second blogger suspected to have been killed by fundamentalist groups in the past two years. Ahmed Rajib Haider was killed in February 2013 for posts antagonising extremist groups. After Haider’s death, Bangladesh’s hardline Islamist groups started to protest against other campaigning bloggers, accusing them of blasphemy and calling a series of nationwide strikes to demand their execution.

The government reacted by arresting some atheist bloggers. It also blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the furore over blasphemy, as well as stepping up security for the bloggers. In 2004, Humayun Azad, a prominent writer and teacher at Dhaka University, was seriously injured in an attack when he was returning from the same book fair.

The attacks starkly underline an increasing gulf between secular bloggers and conservative Islamic groups, often covertly connected with Islamist parties. Secularists have urged authorities to ban religion-based politics, while Islamists have pressed for blasphemy laws to prevent criticism of their faith.

Islam is Bangladesh’s state religion but the country is governed by secular laws based on British common law, and Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, has repeatedly said she will not give in to religious extremism.

The latest murder comes against a backdrop of political violence since the beginning of January. More than 100 people have been killed in molotov cocktail attacks amid a political deadlock. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party is demanding a fresh election administered by an independent interim government, which the ruling Awami League flatly rejects.

Robert Gibson, the British high commissioner, expressed his shock at Roy’s murder and the recent violence in the country. Baki Billah, a friend of Roy and a blogger, told Independent TV that Roy had been threatened earlier by people upset at his writing.

“He was a free thinker. He was a Hindu but he was not only a strong voice against Islamic fanatics but also equally against other religious fanatics,” Billah said.