Demonstrations have continued over fatal attacks on secular writers and publishers in Bangladesh suspected to have been carried out by hardline Islamists, with books burned and businesses closed in protest.

Hundreds of people, including writers, publishers and bookshop owners, took to the streets of the capital, Dhaka, on Monday to protest against what they said was government inaction over a string of attacks, including the murder on Saturday of a publisher of secular books.

“This is not an isolated incident. They first started killing authors, then the bloggers and now they’ve targeted the publishers,” Mustafa Selim, head of the Bangladesh Creative Publishers Society, told reporters.

Rallies were also held in other cities and towns to demand more protection for publishers, bloggers and writers, some of whom have fled the country or gone into hiding.

“The people who have so far fallen victim to the attacks are thinking people, those who believe in freedom of expression, and those who believe in secular values. A series of killings have taken place but now the focus is on publishers ... I feel absolutely traumatised,” said Mohiuddin Ahmed, a publisher in Dhaka.



Protesters carry a banner with the image of Faisal Arefin Dipan. Photograph: Sk Hasan Ali/Demotix/Corbis

Fears of Islamic extremist violence have been rising in mainly moderate Muslim-majority Bangladesh after four atheist bloggers were murdered by machete-wielding attackers this year.

Two foreigners – an Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer – have also been killed, while Dhaka’s main shrine for the small local Shia Muslim minority was bombed last month, killing two people and wounding dozens.

While it was believed to be the first attack on Shia Muslims in Bangladesh, in the past two years banned Islamic militant groups have killed more than a dozen Sufi Muslims and attacked Hindus and Christians.

The killing of foreigners has worried the country’s expatriate community and threatened its fragile economy, which is heavily reliant on foreign aid and a $25bn (£16bn) garment industry making clothing for international brands.

Responsibility for the attack on the Italian aid worker was quickly claimed by Islamic State, but the Bangladeshi government denied the extremist militant group had any presence in the country.

After staging protests on Saturday night and Sunday, secular activists including hundreds of teachers, writers and students also resumed their rallies at Dhaka University, the nation’s main secular bastion.

“The murderers should be caught as soon as possible. There must be an end to this nightmare,” publisher Farid Ahmed, who received a death threat in a text message on Sunday, told the AFP news agency.

On Saturday, a gang of suspected Islamists armed with machetes and cleavers hacked Faisal Arefin Dipan to death in his publishing office in the capital. Two secular bloggers and another publisher were also badly injured in a similar attack hours earlier in their Dhaka office.

Ahmed Sikder Loton, president of Bangladesh Book Sellers and Publishers Association, said his organisation had observed a “silent protest” across the country to protest against the killing of the publishers.

He told the Guardian: “Writers, publishers and readers together make our business. If writers do not deliver then we cannot publish a good book and if I am not able to publish a good book then readers will not buy book from me ... Tomorrow these attacks may be on readers. We must protest against this injustice.”

Kaiser Hamidul Haq, an English professor at Bangladesh’s University of Liberal Arts, said: “They have targeted bloggers, they have targeted writers … and they have now targeted publishers. It seems that the attacks are slowly escalating. Everyone is very apprehensive, especially in relation to the failures of the law enforcement agencies.”

A militant group believed to be affiliated to al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for the attacks, calling the victims “atheists and blasphemers”.



The group, which claims to be behind the previous killings, also threatened to murder more writers and publishers who defamed Islam.

Police say they are sceptical of the AQIS claim of responsibility and suspect a banned local Islamist outfit, known as the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), is behind the series of attacks. The group has also been linked to a “hit list” of Bangladeshi bloggers around the world.

The origin of the list is unclear, however, and some have doubted it is an official statement from the ABT in Bangladesh, but instead compiled or published from the UK or elsewhere in the west.

More than 150 writers, including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel and Colm Tóibín, signed a letter condemning the series of fatal attacks and calling on the government of Bangladesh “to ensure that the tragic events … are not repeated”.

Both of the publishers targeted on Saturday put out books by Avijit Roy, a Bangladesh-born US citizen and atheist writer, who was hacked to death in February.

Imran H Sarkar, organiser of a blogger and online activist network, told the Guardian that, with the government apparently unlikely to be able to prevent future attacks, many felt insecure.

“Mere lip service does not provide any assurance,” Sarkar said.