Gay-rights activist among 2 fatally stabbed in Dhaka
NEW DELHI — Unidentified assailants fatally stabbed two men in Bangladesh’s capital Monday night, including a gay-rights activist who also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, police said, in the latest in a series of attacks targeting atheists, moderates and foreigners.
Police said they suspected radical Islamists in the attack, which occurred two days after a university professor was hacked to death. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The victims were identified as USAID employee Xulhaz Mannan, who previously worked as a U.S. Embassy protocol officer, and his friend, Tanay Majumder, according to Mohammed Iqbal, a police officer in Dhaka’s Kalabagan area. Mannan was also an editor of Bangladesh’s first gayrights magazine, Roopbaan, as well as a cousin of former Foreign Minister Dipu Moni of the governing Awami League party.
The U.S. ambassador condemned the killing, just weeks after the U.S. government and numerous rights groups urged the government of the Muslim-majority country to better protect its citizens and secure free speech.
“I am devastated by the brutal murder of Xulhaz Mannan and another young Bangladeshi this evening in Dhaka,” Ambassador Marcia Bernicat said in a statement. “Xulhaz was more than a colleague to those of us fortunate to work with him at the U.S. Embassy. He was a dear friend.”
Security guard Mohammed Parvez told reporters that five or six young men posing as employees of a courier service entered the sixstory building where Mannan lived and went to his unit.
Bangladesh has been riven by a wave of deadly attacks on foreigners, religious minorities and secular bloggers, raising fears that religious extremists are gaining a foothold in the country, despite its traditions of secularism and tolerance.