Mr. Mahfuz Anam's Confession Exposed his Newspaper's Role as a Conduit for the Military-Backed Government in Bangladesh
~ Shabbir Ahmed
Dr. Avijit Roy and His Enlightening Role for Freethinking in Bangladesh
Dr. Avijit Roy was hacked to death just outside the Dhaka Book Fair by assailants with machetes on February 26, 2015. The assailants attacked him from behind as we learned from the news report. These killers were not different from those who picked up Bengali intellectuals and killed them mercilessly in 1971. At the end of our liberation war in 1971, the military wing (Al-Badrs and Al-Shams) of Jamaat-I-Islami and other Islamic forces brutally killed many intellectuals. These forces re-organized themselves in various forms to continue this killing of selected intellectuals even after our independence. There are many manifestations of Al-Badrs and Al-Shams namely, Jamaatul Mujahedin, Harkatul Jiahad al Islam, Bangla Ansar, Jagrata Muslim Janata, etc. If the government bans the activities of one, the terrorists form one more with a different name to advance the causes of Al-Badrs and Al-Shams or in other words, the causes of their parent organization named Bangladesh Jamaat-I-Islami. The recent killing of Dr. Avijit Roy is the continuation of the process of elimination of maverick writers so that the forces of darkness can continue spreading their philosophy of obscurantism unabatedly in Bangladesh.