USAID Worker’s Murder Highlights Bangladesh’s Descent Into Extremism
Sungho Park / Olivia Enos /
Bangladesh has become a hotbed for Islamic extremists, and a recent spree of murders demonstrate a move away from democracy and freedom of speech in the South Asian nation.
Six men posing as couriers broke into the apartment of Xulhaz Mannan, an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and hacked Mannan and his friend, Tanay Mojumdar, to death with machetes on April 25. The Bangladeshi division of al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, claimed responsibility for the killing.
Mannan was a USAID worker who served at the U.S. Embassy. He was also an LGBT rights activist who founded Bangladesh’s first LGBT magazine, Roopbaan. Mojumdar also worked at the magazine.
The murders of Mannan and Mojumdar are two in a series of horrific murders of secular bloggers and activists. Over five atheist bloggers have been killed since 2013, including Ananta Bijoy Das, Washiqur Rahman Babu, Avijit Roy—a Bangladeshi-American citizen—and Niloy Chatterjee. Just two days prior to the murders of Mannan and Mojumdar, English professor and well-known secularist, Rezaul Karim Siddique, was hacked to death by machete-wielding extremists. And prior to that, Nazimuddin Samad, a secular blogger and law student at Jagannath University, was killed.
Since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League’s re-election in January 2014, extremism has continued to rise in Bangladesh. The 2014 elections are largely viewed as unfree and unfair and were boycotted by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. At least 120 people died due to election-related violence.
The Bangladeshi government has been criticized for not doing enough to track down and punish the perpetrators of the attacks. There is a growing sense that the government must do more to confront the extremist threat and ensure respect for pluralism and free speech.
Secretary of State John Kerry has condemned the most recent killings and called on the Bangladesh government to “investigate the murders and bring the perpetrators to justice.” The U.S. government previously considered granting secular bloggers humanitarian parole, which would allow them to temporarily live in the U.S. while fleeing imminent danger. The decision has not yet been finalized.
The Heritage Foundation is hosting an event on the current situation in Bangladesh and what can be done to curb the growing extremist threat (you can watch a live link here). One of the panelists, Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor:
We’ve always thought of Bangladesh as an example of a Muslim country with a functioning democracy, where women participate in governance, and the full range of political and human rights are broadly respected and freedoms are expressed. But now we see the threats to that foundation clearly growing as Islamist extremists try to change the orientation of Bangladeshi society and try to Islamicize the complexion of the country.
Bangladesh must ensure the right to life for all peoples, regardless of their religious creed or political beliefs. It is in the Bangladesh’s interest to ensure freedom of speech and enhance democratic institutions.