An activist blogger was murdered in Dhaka today.
A blogger and online activist, who was active in the Shahbagh movement, was killed in the capital’s Pallabi area Friday night, prompting the Shahbagh protesters to return to their 24-hour demonstration.
Police recovered the body of 30-year-old Ahmed Rajib Haider, full with indiscriminate stab injuries, from near his Kalshi residence in Mirpur.
I know nothing about the Shahbagh movement, but if he was killed for being an activist, I know something about the movement’s enemies, and thus a little about the movement by inference.
Pallabi police also confirmed that Rajib was an active participant of Shahbag movement.
Rajib used to write a Bangla blog nicknamed ‘Thaba Baba’.
He had also written many blog on the country’s Liberation War and Jamaat-e-Islami’s wicked activities.
About eight hours before his assassination, Rajib posted a status on Facebook calling upon mass people to boycott Jamaat’s media houses, coaching centers, cultural organisations and commercial institutions.
Ah. He was an opponent of Jamaat. Now he’s full of stab wounds, and dead.
Thanks to Tasneem Khalil for alerting me.
“Militant secularism” my ass..,.
For a bit more background for the people who haven’t been following this.
Jamaat-e-Islami is the largest Islamic party in Bangladesh. Several of their leaders have been convicted of war crimes when Bangladesh gained independence in 1971. TheShahbag protest started when one of those (nicknamed The Butcher of Mirpur) was only sentenced to life instead of executed and one of the demands is the execution of all the people convicted of war crimes or crimes against humanity in the 1971 war. The other demand are the a ban from politics for Jamaat & either confiscation of all that this party owns or a permanent boycott.
Thank you, Who, that’s helpful.
The Wikipedia article for the 2013 Shahbag Protest has more info.
I didn’t know him personally, but I liked his well-written posts that he contributed regularly to an atheist blog run by some ex-Muslim folks from Bangladesh – a blog that was once featured in Pharyngula. This hits pretty close to home.
Oh. That is close to home.
Tasneem probably knew or knew of him the same way.
Oy.
We’re a community. At least that means we can try to pick up a fallen baton when necessary. It also means we’re always getting stabs, but it’s still better than not being a community.
We hate Jamat Shibir.
Its not yet confirmed who killed Rajib. Jmaat is fighitng police, RAB, BGB and Awamiligue at this momment. They did not target any individual in particular till now. Who knows may be the assassination was carried out by government to ignite the movement. Government already successfully put those kids at war against Jamaat. Whereas its the job of the government to fight Jamaat.
Why we expect innocent kids to fight Jamaat when we voted the governement in the office to carry out those fights. I think Governement is giving Jammat opportunities to bomb this crowd at shahbag so government’s failure of last 4 years can be diverted into something else and next election come easy to them. Otherwise knowing jamaat could do anything at this mommnet for the survival why would the government allow so many young fellows to gather at Shahbag and continue to stay there 24/7 for weeks. So many of those young people do not even belong to any political party. They made it clear so many times. Then why the government would allow them to gradually go against a particular political party. Why would the government open a new warfrront against jamaat led by innocent young people. Fighting Jamaat is not their job. They did not even know that they were going to start a fight against jamaat when they first started their protest. They were protesting the government for playing with verdict of the war crime trial. Now what are we witnessing. Its not the Awamiligue or Chhatraleague or any other political parties fighting Jamaat. Its the young people at Shahbag who are calling the fight. When government forces like police, rab, dgfi, bdr with all kinds of arms, ammuniation and menpower are failing to fight jamaat then why these young, innocent people who barely have any political affiliation would fight jammat. Who is getting this game played. Why this easy target would have to be the main target of government’s main enemy. For any government to allow a boiling movement like this continue for a such long period of time, knowing a disastrous attack could be carried out any momment is very rare. Why would government support hunderds of civilians death, God forbid, if shahbag is attacked.
Remeber, for Jamaat who already sacrificed dozens of their men its way easier to attack Shahbag then fighting armed polices and RAB. How long they would stop the temptation of attacking Shahbag. They know they are getting tested but does Shahbag know they are getting tested too.
Don’t you think Awamiligue wants jamaat to take the opportunity of such an easy target. Is not this an entrapment?
Remember …Emotion mostly has no place in politics. Peoples’ emotion is there to be used by leaders only.