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Bangladeshi writers stage freedom rally despite fear of attack
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/03/us-bangladesh-islamists-idUSKCN0SS18420151103About 1,000 Bangladeshi authors and teachers marched through the streets of the capital on Tuesday, asserting their right to free speech days after a suspected Islamist group attacked writers and publishers critical of religious militancy.
Bangladesh is in the throes of a violent struggle between hardline groups bent on turning the Muslim-majority nation into a sharia-based theocracy on the one hand, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina determined to root out extremism on the other.
On Saturday, a publisher was hacked to death in his office in Dhaka by men wielding sharp weapons, hours after similar attacks on two writers and another publisher.
Despite the climate of fear caused by the attacks that follow the killings of four secularist bloggers this year, writers turned out in large numbers for the rally in Dhaka.
Bangladesh is in the throes of a violent struggle between hardline groups bent on turning the Muslim-majority nation into a sharia-based theocracy on the one hand, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina determined to root out extremism on the other.
On Saturday, a publisher was hacked to death in his office in Dhaka by men wielding sharp weapons, hours after similar attacks on two writers and another publisher.
Despite the climate of fear caused by the attacks that follow the killings of four secularist bloggers this year, writers turned out in large numbers for the rally in Dhaka.
