Shahbagh protester killed

Unknown assailants hacked a blog activist to death in Dhaka’s Pallabi on Friday.

Blog activist Ahmed Rajib Haider Shuvo

Ahmed Rajib Haider, 26, was an active participant of the ongoing nonstop demonstrations at Shahbagh demanding death sentences for all ‘war criminals’.

Officer-in-Charge of Pallabi Police Station Abdul Latif Sheikh told bdnews24.com that they recovered Shuvo’s body from Laalmatia’s Palashnagar around 9pm.

He said the face bore signs of slashes. A scarf was wrapped around the blogger’s throat, Sheikh added.

This was not a simple mugging case as police said the deceased’s laptop was found near the body of the architect.

The OC said Haider lived in Palashnagar and was murdered near his residence.

After the news of the murder spread, Imran H Sarker, a member of the Blogger and Online Activist Network, announced to continue their demonstration without pause in a change of plan.

“We’ve been hit. One of our bloggers has been murdered in Mirpur. In this situation, we cannot return from the streets and we won’t,” Sarker had said.

The demonstrators at Shahbagh observed a minute’s silence. They chanted slogans promising to avenge Haider’s death, shouting the slogan, “Rajib Bhaier Rokto Britha jete debona (We won’t let the sacrifice of brother Rajib count for nothing).

Earlier the day, Sarker had announced daily seven-hour protests.

Pallabi police Sub Inspector Matiar Rahman told bdnews24.com that the deceased used to work at a private firm. The blogger went out of his residence after 5pm.

Haider’s relatives said that he used to regularly write blogs and had been active in the Shahbagh demonstration demanding death sentences for all ‘war criminals’.

The online activist’s Facebook account was ‘Thaba Baba’. In his last status update around 3pm on Friday, he urged everyone to boycott all institutions controlled or funded by Jamaat-e-Islami.

Roughly translated into English, the status reads, “It is necessary to fix an outline about where and how to boycott [the Jamaat-leaning institutions]… As there are chances that ownerships of those institutions that we’ll boycott for being Jamaat affiliated will change overnight… through a simple exchange of [company] shares.”

He continued, “But I can say one thing from my position, boycott widely known Jamaat affiliated products and institutions, for example, their mouthpiece ‘Sangram’ or their educational institutions-coaching centres and their cultural organisations.”