Dhaka: Two people,
including the editor of a magazine for the transgender community, have been
hacked to death in the capital of Bangladesh.
A third person, a
security guard at the apartment building where the killings took place, was
seriously wounded in Monday’s attack in Dhaka, in which six attackers murdered
Julhas Mannan and Tanay Mojumdar. Mannan was the editor of Rupban, the only
LGBT magazine in the country, and he had previously worked at the US embassy in
the city.
Maruf Hossain
Sorder, a Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman, said: “Unidentified attackers
entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death.”
The incident came two days after a
university professor was killed in similar fashion in an attack in Rajshahi,
which was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS)
group.
Homosexuality is technically illegal
in Bangladesh and remains a highly sensitive issue in society.
Both men were openly gay and believed
that if more gay Bangladeshis came out then the country would have to accept
them.
They were also behind the annual “Rainbow
Rally”, held on Bengali New Year, 14 April, since 2014. This year’s rally was
banned by police as part of widespread security measures.
Meanwhile Bangladesh’s best known
blogger said he had received a death threat on Sunday.
Last year, at least four atheist
bloggers and a secular publisher were hacked to death in a long-running series
of killings of secular activists.
The South Asian
country has seen a surge in violent attacks over the past few months in which
liberal and secular activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other
religious groups have been targeted.
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