Sergei Supinsky, AFP file picture | The alleged attackers are believed to have posed as couriers

Two people, including a senior editor of Bangladesh’s first LGBT magazine, have been found hacked to death in an apartment in the capital Dhaka, officials said Monday.

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At least five unidentified attackers came to the apartment in Dhaka posing as couriers and attacked them with machetes, hacking two people to death, police officials said, citing witnesses. A security guard was also injured in the assault.

Julhas Mannan, a senior editor of “Rupban”, the country’s pioneering magazine for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community, was named by police as one of the victims.

Mannan, who had worked at the US embassy in Bangladesh, was behind an annual Rainbow Rally, which since 2014 has been held on April 14, the Bengali New Year. But police this year banned the rally as part of widespread security measures.

Ahead of the banned rally earlier this month, Mannan told AFP that they had received threats from Islamists, who posted messages online.

"They have even set up an online group to threaten us," he said.

The US State Department reacted with outrage to Mannan’s slaying.

“We are outraged by the barbaric attack on Mr. Mannan, a beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate for LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) rights, human rights, actually,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington.

LGBT community under threat



The death came two days after a liberal and free-thinking professor was hacked to death in the northwestern city of Rajshahi, the latest in a series of murders of secular bloggers and liberal activists that has left the country reeling.

The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack through its news agency, saying the 58-year-old professor who wrote poetry and fiction had been murdered for "calling for atheism".

But Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan rejected the IS group's claim and said "local militants" were responsible for the murder.

The LGBT community has been heavily persecuted in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. But in recent years some activists have tried to increase awareness and rights.

“Rupban”, which was founded by Mannan and some of his friends two years ago, has become a platform for promoting the rights of LGBT Bangladeshis, seeking to spread tolerance in a nation where same-sex relationships are a punishable offence.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

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