The International Humanist and Ethical Union has issued a call to action on the Bangladesh situation. It’s gotten worse than I thought.

Islamist political parties have provided government with a list of 84 "atheist bloggers" and are demanding the death penalty for "insulting religion". Several bloggers have already been arrested and a government official promised to pursue all those listed. Crowd at Islamist rally against atheist bloggers in Bangladesh Last week, we said the government would be "walking into a trap set by fundamentalists" if they gave any succour to these demands. But they did. And on Friday a rally on the order of 100,000 Islamists marched in Dhaka (video) calling for a new blasphemy law and for the execution of the atheist bloggers. Earlier this year a prominent atheist blogger was murdered in a machete attack at his home, so we are also concerned about the safety in public of those accused of "blasphemy".

So there’s something else that would disappear in a world without gods.

It’s a call to action; so what are we supposed to do?

They have four simple suggestions: express your dissent online (I know you can do that!), rally and protest, contact your ambassador to Bangladesh and express your concerns, and contact the Bangladeshi embassy. They have suggestions at the link for how to do that.

You know, it’s getting very hard to argue that atheism is not a human rights issue when people are being jailed and murdered for expressing their conscientious beliefs.