In Bangladesh hacking people to death for their "rational", "atheist" or even "anti-Islamic" views is acquiring epidemic proportions.
On Monday, the editor of Bangladesh’s only gay magazine, Roopban, Xulhaz Mannan, along with his friend Tanay Mojumdar, were hacked to death in Mannan’s home in Dhaka (video above). A third person, a security guard at the apartment building, was seriously wounded in the attack.
Parvez Mollah, the 18-year-old security guard, told Al Jazeera that the six attackers were aged between 25 and 30, and that they had arrived at the building posing as couriers.
"They told me they had some parcels for Mannan and, as I went up to his apartment, three of the six attackers followed me to the second floor and attacked Mannan with machetes," Mollah said.
"As Mannan fell to the floor, the attackers entered the apartment and fired bullets before fleeing."
Monday's incident comes just two days after an English professor, 58-year-old Rezaul Karim Siddique, was hacked to death in the country's northwestern city of Rajshahi. The professor was not an atheist."
Here is an Al Jazeera report on the spate of these killings.
Bangladesh Today has reported that all the "machete-wielding assassins" have been identified.
The US ambassador to Bangladesh condemned the killing of Xulhaz Mannan, who worked at the US embassy.
In the aftermath of Mannan's death, videos from his YouTube channel have been circulating on social media.
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