In the week that an LGBT magazine founder was killed, Asha Mone speaks out about the death of her husband in August last year

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Asha Mone has been living in constant fear for her life.



It is eight months since her husband, the Bangladeshi secular blogger Niladry Chattopadhya, was hacked to death, and as the lone witness to his killing, she has confined herself to an undisclosed location out of concern for her own safety.

“I cannot lead a normal life. I am afraid of travelling alone,” she tells the Guardian. “Each new killing is only increasing the sense of fear.”

Chattopadhya, known as Niloy Neel, was killed in August last year at his residence in the Goran area of Dhaka – one in a series of attacks by extremists that have sown fear among the south Asian nation’s liberals.

In the most recent incident, on Monday, Xulhaz Mannan, the founder of Bangladesh’s only LGBT magazine, was hacked to death in Dhaka by a gang who posed as couriers in order to gain access to his apartment in the Kalabagan area of the city. A friend of Mannan was also killed.

Chattopadhya had told the Guardian via email in May 2015 that he was scared of being killed, and that police had not taken his fears seriously.



At midday on 7 August, a young man pretending to be looking to rent an apartment arrived at the door. There was a vacancy in the building and an unsuspecting Mone let him in. As Chattopadhya came out of his bedroom to ask the man to leave, three others barged in and attacked him with machetes.

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Hours after the killing, Ansar ul-Islam, a little-known group that has been linked to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility. Two members of the banned extremist group Ansarullah Bangla Team were arrested over the attack later in August.



Five people in total have been arrested, a spokesman for Dhaka police said this week. “There is progress in the investigation,” he added.

The killers locked Mone out on the balcony of the flat as they killed her husband. “We generally find our homes safe, but are we really safe?” she asks, still processing the trauma. Seeking police protection “isn’t a solution” for her, she adds.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women place a floral wreath during a protest against the killing of Niladry Chattopadhya in August 2015. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images

As extremists continue to commit targeted killings in Bangladesh, insecurity has gripped the liberal section of society. The number of police checkpoints has increased on the streets of Dhaka. But Imran H Sarkar, an organiser of the blogger and online activist network, says the government has shown it is unable to prevent these attacks or ward off threats of further violence.

“Mere lip-service does not provide any assurance,” he says.

At least six bloggers, a publisher, and a professor – as well as Mannan, the LGBT activist – have been killed since 2013 in similar attacks that involve hacking with machetes. While police have arrested suspects on many occasions, they have not made headway into any of the investigations to date except in the killing of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider.

“We are losing hope. I have no contact with the police or even any update of the case,” Mone says.

“The progressive minds are being suppressed with machetes and cleavers. Unless the government brings the perpetrators to book, these incidents will continue to happen.”



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Political analysts believe the killings stem from events in Shahbag Square in Dhaka in February 2013, when a group of progressive youths demanded the death penalty for the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, accused of committing murder and rape during Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan in 1971.

“They [extremists] are trying to create a panic in the society” by targeting significant people, says Zia Rahman, a professor of criminology at the University of Dhaka.



Kaiser Hamidul Haq, an English professor at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, says: “It seems that they [extremists] are slowly escalating [their attacks]. Everyone is very apprehensive, especially in the case of the failure of the law enforcing agency so far.”

Mone’s ordeal is far from over. She has been taking sleeping pills, but has hope that by cooperating with the authorities, she will eventually help bring Chattopadhya’s killers to justice.

“I feel guilty at times that I couldn’t protect him,” she says. “But now I think I have to survive to seek justice.”