Bangladesh Embassy Worker And Secular Blogger Hacked To Death By Suspected Islamic Extremists

The slaughter of intellectuals and civil liberties advocates has continued in Bangladesh. A U.S. Embassy worker and editor of Bangladesh’s first LGBT magazine Xulhaz Mannan was one of two men hacked to death this week in what is believed to be the latest murders by Islamic extremists. We have been discussing the surge of Islamic extremism in Bangladesh, particularly targeting secular writers. Law student and secular writer Nazimuddin Samad, 26, was the sixth such victim recently. Then last week we had the murder of a popular professor.

Mannan and someone described only as a friend were in an apartment in Dhaka when five or six young men pretended to be couriers and gained entrance to deliver a package. They went directly to the second-floor apartment and hacked Mannan and his friend to death with machetes. Mannan’s mother and a maid were in the flat at the time for the savage murder.

Mannan was the editor of Roopbaan, a Dhaka-based LGBT magazine that describes itself as “a platform and publication promoting human right and freedom to love in Bangladesh.” That is enough to justify murder in the eyes of these Islamic extremists who believe that these atrocities actually please Allah.

Source: CNN