The brutal murder of Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy, hacked to death by unknown assailants, suggests that the containment of free speech by radical entities who contradict secular and liberal values is seeping through the pores of its society.
Roy is the second blogger to have been hacked to death and the fourth to have been attacked since 2004. His death is not a coincidence but an overt threat to those who subscribe to freedom of thought and expression. Mere condemnation of this crime will not suffice. The solutions lie in laying the groundwork for a socially stable state and this could be triggered by finding a cure to the political instability that currently exists in the country between the ruling party, Bangladesh Awami League, under Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina Wajed, and her rival Khalida Zia who heads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The latter organisation has close connections with the Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical party banned from participating in elections since its top leaders were convicted of war crimes during the nation’s freedom struggle in 1971.
This power struggle could see Bangladesh’s fortunes plummeting on multiple fronts. The unchecked rise of radical groups, and the state’s attempts to crack down on them, could in turn, threaten the stability of neighbouring states, some of which are trying to contain internal challenges of their own. Radical groups prosper in a society which is fragmented and Bangladeshi society needs to weave together a lasting defence from within.
