The Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday said the Bangladeshi authorities should immediately investigate the killings of two ‘LGBT human rights activists’.
Police found Xulhaz Mannan and Tonoy Mahbub hacked to death in an apartment in the capital on Monday evening.
The killings follow a spate of recent targeted attacks on writers, educators, bloggers, and editors who promote liberal and secular ideas that radical groups believe are against Islam, said the New York-based global rights body.
It observed the killings of Mannan and Mahbub bring to nine the number of liberals hacked to death in Bangladesh in 2016.
“The slaughter of two men advocating for the basic rights of Bangladesh’s beleaguered LGBT community should prompt a thorough investigation, aimed at prosecuting those responsible,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“The government needs to protect activists and to call a halt to the impunity that links this chain of vicious murders.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed LGBT people in Bangladesh in recent months and found that they faced threats of violence, particularly after homophobic public comments by Islamic leaders.
“The massacre of two gay men in a private home demonstrates the need for the government to combat extremists preying on minorities,” Ganguly said.
“Dismissing sexual orientation as a non-issue effectively sanctions abuse of an already-marginalised community,” the HRW said.
Source: Prothom Alo
The Americans are a strange people. They are concerned about a few homos killed in here while they have been happily complacent about the brutal killings of religious persons here. They are not concerned about the Palestinians, even their children. They are not concerned about the inhuman plight of the millions of Iraquis, Libyans and Afghans whom they have brought to such a deplorable situation. They are even mum about the inhuman killings of thousands of Muslims in the hands of Indian military and paramilitary in Kashmir. They are even not concerned about the brutal, inhuman, bestial burning to death of innocent Muslims in India. They are not concerned about the gross hate campaign even by a presidential candidate in their own soil. Huh! What should this be called? Naked and shameful hypocrisy? Sad, very sad indeed!