Attacks on atheists in Bangladesh

Attacks by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh refers to increased attacks since 2013 on a number of secularist and atheist writers, bloggers, and publishers in Bangladesh and foreigners, and religious minorities such as Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and Shias. These attacks have been largely blamed by extremist groups such as Ansarullah Bangla Team and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

The Bangladeshi government was criticized for its responses to the attacks, which included charging and jailing some of the secularist bloggers for allegedly defaming religious groups – a strategy seen as pandering to hard line elements within Bangladesh's majority Muslim population (about 89% of the population). The government's eventual crackdown in June 2016 was also criticized for its heavy-handedness, as more than 11,000 people were arrested in little more than a week (as of 18 June 2016).

As of 2 July 2016, a total of 48 people, including 20 foreign nationals, were killed in such attacks.

In 2010 the government of Bangladesh, headed by the secularist Awami League, established a war crimes tribunal to investigate war crimes perpetrated during Bangladesh's bloody 1971 War of Independence from Pakistan. In February 2013 Abdul Quader Molla, a leader of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party (a small Islamist party within the opposition coalition), was sentenced to life imprisonment by the tribunal. The sentence was condemned by Bangladesh's secularist bloggers and writers, who helped organize the 2013 Shahbag protests in response, calling for the death penalty for Molla. The protestors quickly expanded their demands to include outlawing the Jamaat-e-Islami party itself for its role in the 1971 war.

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Wikipedia