Publisher And Two Secular Writers Hacked To Death In Bangladesh

A publisher of a slain online critic of religious militancy was hacked to death on Saturday in the Bangladesh capital, police said, hours after similar attacks on two secular writers and another publisher in the majority-Muslim country. Faysal Arefin published books by Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin who was killed by Islamists militants in the same way in February.

Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years, as the government has cracked down on Islamist groups seeking to turn the South Asian nation of 160 million people into a sharia-based state. The country has also been rocked by attacks in which two foreigners were shot dead and a Shi'ite shrine in Dhaka was bombed. In the earlier attacks on Saturday, two secular writers and another publisher of Roy were stabbed and shot in Dhaka.

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Fourth secular Bangladesh blogger hacked to death

A gang armed with machetes has hacked a secular blogger to death at his home in Dhaka in the fourth such murder in Bangladesh since the start of the year, an activist group and police have said. Niloy Chatterjee, who used the pen-name Niloy Neel, was murdered on Friday after the men broke into his flat in the capital's Goran neighbourhood, according to the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network, which was alerted to the attack by a witness.

"They entered his room in the fifth floor and shoved his friend aside and then hacked him to death. He was a listed target of the Islamist militants," the network's head Imran H Sarker, told the AFP news agency.
Later on Friday, Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star, reported that Ansar al-Islam, a local chapter of al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the killing. The newspaper said the group had sent an email to media houses in Bangladesh, adding that the authenticity of the email issued by Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, who claimed himself to be the spokesman of Ansar-Al-Islam, could not be verified independently. Chatterjee, 40, was a critic of religious extremism that led to bombings in mosques and the killing of numerous civilians, Sarker said.

Attacks on Bangladesh bloggers in 2015
August 6 - Niloy Chatterjee, blogger, hacked to death at his home in Dhaka.
May 12 - Ananta Bijoy Das, blogger for Mukto-Mona website, killed while on his way to work in the city of Sylhet.
March 30 - Washiqur Rahman Babu, blogger, hacked to death by three men in Dhaka.
February 26 - Avijit Roy, a prominent Bangladeshi-American blogger, killed while walking with his wife outside Dhaka University.

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Dhaka bans NGOs from helping Rohingya

Bangladesh has ordered three international charities to stop providing aid to Rohingya refugees crossing the border from Myanmar where they have fled persecution and violence.

Local administrator Joynul Bari said on Thursday that France's Doctors without Borders (MSF), Action Against Hunger (ACF) and Britain's Muslim Aid UK have been told to suspend their services in the Cox's Bazaar district bordering Myanmar.

"The charities have been providing aid to tens of thousands of undocumented Rohingya refugees illegally. We asked them to stop all their projects in Cox's Bazaar following directive from the NGO Affairs Bureau," Bari told the AFP news agency. Bari said the charities "were encouraging an influx of Rohingya refugees" from across the border in Myanmar's Rakhine state in the wake of recent sectarian violence that left at least 80 people killed.

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Climate migrants cause baby boom in Bangladesh's urban slums

Climate and economic migrants to Bangladesh’s urban slums are contributing to a population boom that is creating social strains in this tiny and impoverished country of 160 million people.

Bangladesh is suffering increasingly frequent flooding from cyclones and from heavy rainfall that experts believe is associated with climate change. Its coastal plains are particularly at risk, but many who live in the country’s interior are also vulnerable to river bank erosion – or conversely to drought.

When flooding and erosion displace families, and in many cases leave them landless and penniless, they often take refuge in urban areas, and have little option but to live in slums. There, lack of education about family planning, poor access to birth control and worries about financial security combine to result in large families.

“These unlucky people feel that in old age they will have to depend on children to secure a living. So, they prefer to take more number of children to be sure that at least one of them will take care of the parents,” said Ainun Nishat, an environmentalist and vice chancellor of Brac University.

AlertNet