NEW DELHI — Men armed with machetes have killed a secular activist in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, a police official said on Thursday, the latest in a series of grisly attacks on intellectuals and bloggers who have written critically about Islamists on social media.
Witnesses said a group of cleanshaven men surrounded Mohammad Nazim Uddin, a law student, and slashed his head, then shot him when he fell to the ground, said Syed Nurul Islam, the deputy commissioner of police for Wari, the area of Old Dhaka where the killing took place late Wednesday. Mr. Islam said the attack lasted less than a minute.
The victim’s Facebook page identifies him as a member of the Shahbag movement, which seeks to punish Bangladeshis who fought for Pakistan during the bloody 1971 war for independence.
In recent posts, Mr. Uddin had expressed support for a petition to remove Islam as Bangladesh’s state religion, and he had urged the government to take a tougher line with Islamist groups. In one post, he used a proverb to criticize the government’s approach to rising militancy, likening it to raising a baby snake by feeding it milk and bananas.
Under a Facebook heading identifying the user’s religious views, Mr. Uddin wrote, “I have no religion.”
In the last 18 months, there has been a rise in extremist violence in Bangladesh, including a series of assassinations of bloggers or intellectuals who have criticized militant Islam. Many writers and journalists have become hesitant to publish work that could attract the attention of Islamists, and a growing list of activists, fearing for their lives, have applied for asylum in Western countries.
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