Dhaka : Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and leading political parties, including the Jamaat-e-Islami, have condemned the brutal murder of a fourth blogger in Bangladesh, the media reported on Saturday.
Niloy Chatterjee, 40, was hacked to death on Friday when five men, suspected to be Islamists armed with machetes, entered his apartment in Gorhan area here where he lived with his family.
Sheikh Hasina warned she will not tolerate terrorism in the name of religion.
“We cannot let this happen in Bangladesh. The people of this country are peace loving,” she said.
The Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent’s (AQIS) ‘Bangladesh branch’ claimed responsibility for the murder.
Asked about the claim, Hasina said, “They kill themselves to kill other Muslims in the mosque. Then they are murdering bloggers for … writing against religion.”
The Jamaat-e-Islami also condemned the killing.
“We condemn the murder of Niloy Hossain alias Neel. This incident proves that the government has totally failed to provide security to the citizens,” Jamaat leader Hamidur Rahman Azad said.
“This kind of murder is happening regularly. But regrettably the government has failed to stop such brutalities and also to prosecute the real killers,” he added.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) claimed the spate of blogger killings was part of a conspiracy by the government to claim that militancy was a problem in Bangladesh.
“From the way they (bloggers) had been killed in front of law enforcers, it is clear there is a conspiracy,” BNP’s Khandker Mahbub Hossain said.
The other three bloggers — Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu and Ananta Bijoy Das — were also killed in a similar manner.
All four were involved with the ‘Ganajagaran Mancha’, a movement demanding maximum penalty for those who committed war crimes during the 1971 Bangladesh freedom struggle and a ban on religion-based politics.
The UN, the US and Amnesty International have also condemned the killing of the blogger and urged the authorities to bring the killers to justice.