MAM
Kolkata’s Academy of Fine Arts condemns blogger Avijit Roy’s killing
KOLKATA: Activists, artists, intellectuals and writers staged a protest in Kolkata to condemn the killing of Avijit Roy – a Bangladeshi-American blog writer in Dhaka last week.
Roy was also the founder of Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site, which champions liberal secular writing in Bangladesh.
Organised by Bhasha O Chetona Samiti (Language Awareness Society), a Kolkata-based organisation for promotion of Bengali language and culture, the protest saw people gather at the Academy of Fine Arts to condemn Roy’s killing and called for fighting against fundamentalism.
Roy, a 42-year-old bio-engineer working in the United States, was hacked to death by two attackers wielding machetes in Bangladesh capital Dhaka on 26 February, when he was leaving a book fair with his wife Rafida Ahmed Banna, who was also seriously wounded in the attack.
Religious radicals had been threatening Roy over his active campaign against Islamist extremism and for improving secularism in Bangladesh.
As per reports, it should be noted that India as a county has reacted sharply over gruesome killing of liberal author Roy by suspected terror operatives and warned that such acts of extremism aided by groups like Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) could further fuel terrorism in region, a day ahead of Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s visit to Bangladesh.
The United Nations (UN), US State Department, UK and the European Union (EU) have condemned the murder of Roy.
