Two Gay Rights Activists Hacked to Death in Bangladesh

Editor of magazine for transgender community among latest victims of murders targeting liberal activists.

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.

"Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked two people to death," Maruf Hossain Sarder, a Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

Mollah, a security guard, was wounded in the attack and is being treated in hospital [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Hasina vowed to hunt down and prosecute those responsible. She accused the country's opposition party and what she called allied armed groups of being behind the killings. 

The opposition has denied the allegations. No suspects have been arrested, police officer Shamim Ahmed told the Associated Press news agency.

Earlier this month, Nazimuddin Samad, a 28-year-old law student, was hacked to death by three men riding a motorcycle as he walked with a friend in central Dhaka. 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.

Source: AL-JAZEERA