ON APRIL 14th the police prevented Xulhaz Mannan, the editor of Roopbaan, a gay-rights magazine, from organising a “rainbow rally” and arrested several of his supporters. Mr Mannan had argued that if more gay people in Bangladesh were open about their sexuality, their neighbours would learn to accept them. Eleven days later half a dozen men posing as couriers knocked on his door, carrying a parcel full of machetes. They slashed him and a friend to death. A local group affiliated to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility. Promoting tolerance of homosexuality was “American imperialism”, they said.

Bangladesh has become one of the most dangerous places on Earth to suggest in public that gay people might have rights or that Islam might not have all the answers. Since April eight people deemed anti-Islamic have been slaughtered. Rezaul Karim Siddique, a professor who celebrated indigenous music and literature, was all but beheaded on his way to work. Nazimuddin Samad, a young blogger who criticised Islamism, was hacked and shot to death on the street by men shouting “Allahu akbar!”

Bangladesh’s supposedly secular government seems keener to denounce the dead than to catch their killers. “Our society does not allow any movement that promotes unnatural sex,” said the home minister, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, after Mr Mannan’s murder. Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, has likened the slain bloggers’ writing to “porn”. Those who silence secular voices with steel are seldom caught. Liberals complain of a culture of impunity. “We are very worried about our lives. Things are not getting better,” frets a surviving colleague of Mr Mannan. “If the government doesn’t support us, naturally the police won’t support us, either.”

The killers are highly motivated and well organised. Some appear to have been inspired by the triumphal snuff videos of Islamic State. The government accuses opposition parties of being behind the campaign of terror, but offers little evidence to support this charge.

Maruf Rosul, a blogger and secular activist, says he gets death threats all the time. They say things like: “You are an atheist pig. We will kill you.” Those making the threats cannot be identified since they use fake Twitter accounts or make phone calls from encrypted sources over the internet. “Last night I got a threat on [my] mobile [phone] from a Middle East number. This is common.” Mr Rosul admits to feeling afraid, but says he is determined to keep “fighting for a society based on pluralism and equal rights”.