I am Avijit”, wrote Dhaka student Wasiqur Rahman Babu on his Facebook page after the murder of Bangladeshi-American writer Avijit Roy in February, “words cannot be killed”. Babu’s killing, on Sunday, has made clear the darkening threat that Bangladesh’s Islamists pose to the country’s intelligentsia. Executed in a savage attack on Monday, which the police say was likely carried out by the al-Qaeda affiliated Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), the killing was just the latest in a long, grim series. The ABT’s death squads first executed Ahmed Rajib Haider, among the architects of the anti-Islamist Shahbag protests, in February 2013. This was followed by the killing of Rajshahi University social scientist Shaiful Islam Lilon and Daffodil University student Ashraful Alam.
The men were all linked to Facebook pages and blogs where young progressives in Bangladesh have grouped together to take on the country’s religious right-wing — fearlessly critiquing religion, social norms and politics. For Islamists, this has proved to be an intolerable threat. In each case, the victims were slaughtered with meat-knives, their heads and necks slashed in a manner mimicking the ritual executions conducted by the Islamic State. In Facebook posts, the ABT has promised there will be more blood spilt: of atheists, and those it considers apostates.
