Eight persons were sentenced to death by a Dhaka court on February 10 for the killing of the owner of a publishing house on October 31, 2015. The slain person was a progressive minded publisher and the son of a professor of Dhaka University. Such killings of progressive minded persons became dangerously repeated incidents specially in the period between 2015 to 2018. Among the victims was the renowned blog writer Avijit Roy, creater of a platform named Mukta Mona (free thought) who was bestially hacked to death by unknown assailants in public view in a book fair.

Roy and others used the Internet to voice their strong concerns and provocative views against runaway conservatism and fundamentalism in Bangladesh, making them ready targets of the intolerant and violent Islamist groups. The intolerant Islamic fundamentalists have been on a murder spree of bloggers in Bangladesh in the period mentioned. These groups targeted bloggers for their “atheistic” and “secular” views.

The security agencies gradually pulled their acts together to shield the vulnerable progressives and in the last two years the situation in this respect improved. Nonetheless precious lives were lost in this period and countrywide the demand grew intense for the catching and punishing of these wanton killers and meting out exemplary justice to them.

Thus, concerned ones in the country must have felt joy that at least a part of their deepest longing would be fulfilled after the death sentence for the killer of the publishing house on Wednesday. But to people who care, they would be one in hoping and insisting that the wheels of justice will continue to churn and turn till each of the victims of these heinous killings are duly caught to meet the ends of justice.

The intolerant Islamic fundamentalists have been on a murder spree of bloggers in Bangladesh in the period mentioned. These groups have targeted bloggers for their “atheistic” and “secular” views. But when you dig deeper, it would be plain to see these killings were unmistakably another sad testament to the long-raging battle for the country’s soul. The bloggers were among those who would want to hold on to the ideal of a secular state that was conceived after the historic war of liberation against the then West Pakistan in 1971. On the other side are fundamentalists who never accepted that ideal, and draw their inspiration from the collaborators of that period of war. The latter may have been subdued somewhat from much greater police activism and vigilance. But make no mistake. Most of them are still at large ready to exploit any slag in law enforcement in the matter.

Ever since the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government in 2010 started the long-pending process of indictment of Jamaat-e-Islami leaders for the brutal war crimes during the liberation war, the contradictions have become sharper. When one of the leaders, Abdul Quader Mollah, was convicted, spontaneous agitations erupted in Dhaka culminating in the Shahbag protests in 2013 demanding capital punishment for those convicted for the war crimes of 1971.

The sharp political polarisation in Bangladesh, despite a majority of the people favouring punishment for war criminals, has led to the rejuvenation of Islamic forces that were supported at some points by the leading Opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Secular and progressive bloggers such as Roy and others had taken the side of those opposed to the Jamaat-e-Islami and other radical Islamist forces.

The government has since accepted some of the demands of the Shahbag protesters on this issue. But it seems the government is bogged down by the polarised political equations and has not aggressively taken on those who have targeted the bloggers and progressives, making them soft targets for their heinous attackers. Thus the question inevitably arises : how many more bloggers and progressives would have to give up their lives before the government realises that their battle is essentially the same as that for justice for the war crimes of 1971?

Meanwhile, a groundswell of opinion is noted that such barbaric and freestyle killing of free thinkers must be brought to an end immediately by the government or specially by the law enforcement agencies whose main task ought to be to do so. Allegedly but credibly the police have been dragging their feet in relation to these murders. The police force, amazingly, could find no clue of the series murders of some bloggers and others over the years though they are usually credited for their professional competence in such matters. Thus, the rightful outcry to make the police obliged to take action against the murderers through stern directive to that end from the highest level of the government.

Our international image too will be tarred if unabated murders of free thinkers and intellectuals go on giving Bangladesh a bad name as a country where the space for free thinking and behaviour is getting dangerously squeezed or compromised and the intolerants still remain considerably resourceful in their bid for grabbing state power.

Therefore, there are all the reasons for the government in power in Bangladesh today to take this still intolerant environment in some quarters the country very seriously indeed or before the same can turn from worse to worst.