2 MEN WHO PUBLISHED WRITINGS CRITICAL OF EXTREMISM ARE STABBED IN BANGLADESH

[The attacks build on an already unsettling rise in extremist violence in Bangladesh this year. Mr. Roy’s killing, in February, was followed by three more nearly identical assassinations of bloggers and intellectuals who have criticized fundamentalist Islam. In May, the leader of Al Qaeda’s branch in the Indian subcontinent released a video claiming responsibility for the murder of Mr. Roy and one other writer, whom he described as “blasphemers.” Ajoy Roy, the father of Avijit, the murdered blogger, said he believed that Mr. Tutul was targeted because he had published his son’s book.]

By Ellen Barry

Another blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was hacked to death in May this year.

NEW DELHI — Two businessmen who had published the works of Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-American known for his critical writings on religious extremism, were stabbed on Saturday by groups of men in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, the police said. The attack came eight months after Mr. Roy was himself stabbed to death with machetes.

One of the publishers, Faisal Arefin Dipan, died of his wounds immediately, the police said. The other, Ahmed Rahim Tutul, remained in critical condition late Saturday.

Mr. Tutul had received death threats on his mobile phone over books that he had published, said Mizanur Rahman, the director of publicity for the Academic and Creative Publishers Association.

The attacks build on an already unsettling rise in extremist violence in Bangladesh this year. Mr. Roy’s killing, in February, was followed by three more nearly identical assassinations of bloggers and intellectuals who have criticized fundamentalist Islam. In May, the leader of Al Qaeda’s branch in the Indian subcontinent released a video claiming responsibility for the murder of Mr. Roy and one other writer, whom he described as “blasphemers.” Ajoy Roy, the father of Avijit, the murdered blogger, said he believed that Mr. Tutul was targeted because he had published his son’s book.

As “hit lists” of secular writers circulate on the Internet, 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.

Around 3 p.m. on Saturday, a group of men entered the Shuddhashar publishing house, saying they wanted to buy books, said Biplob Kumar Sarker, the deputy police commissioner in Dhaka. They then held two men at gunpoint while other assailants attacked the publisher, Mr. Tutul, and two men who were in his office, Mr. Sarker said. The assailants locked the doors from the outside when they left the premises, and the police, after breaking the locks, said they had found all three men on the floor with severe stab wounds.

Among the men who were attacked along with Mr. Tutul was Sudip Kumar Barman, who blogged under the name Ranadipam Basu, and who had published commentaries on the website curated by Avijit Roy before his death.

Around the same time, three men entered the offices of Jagriti Publications, where they found Mr. Dipan alone and stabbed him, leaving him with fatal neck wounds, said a spokesman at the Shahbag police station. He was pronounced dead at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Mr. Dipan’s business had published “The virus of Faith,” the book that made Mr. Roy a target for militant groups .

Mr. Dipan’s father, Abul Kashem Fazlul Huq, told reporters that after hearing about the attack on the first publisher, he became worried about his son and began trying to reach him by phone.

When he went to the office, “I saw him lying upside down in a massive pool of blood,” his father, told Agence France-Presse. “They slaughtered his neck.”

For decades, Bangladesh has struggled to contain a network of domestic militant cells, some of them linked to political opposition groups. They have regrouped this year, carrying out a string of killings, often in crowded spaces in broad daylight.

Over the last month, the attacks and threats have proliferated. A month ago, Western intelligence services received information suggesting that the Islamic State terrorist group had plans to ramp up its activities in Bangladesh. Shortly thereafter, two foreigners were shot.

On Monday, the Ansarullah Bangla Team, a homegrown terror group, sent a letter to a Bangladeshi cable news station threatening attacks on media outlets if they continued to allow unveiled women to report the news. On Oct. 24, bombers targeted a huge procession of Shiite Muslims in Dhaka, killing a teenage boy. It was the first time in memory that the country’s tiny Shiite minority had come under attack.

Julfikar Ali Manik contributed reporting from Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh.

@ The New York Times