DHAKA: Secular activists marched through the Bangladeshi city of Sylhet on Wednesday to demand justice for a blogger hacked to death this week, the third such attack by suspected Islamists since February.

Scores of activists, mostly university students, peacefully protested through the northeastern city, accusing the government of failing to protect free thinkers and urging authorities to halt “this evil force”.

Wielding machetes, a masked gang killed Ananta Bijoy Das, 33, a banker, editor and blogger, on Tuesday as he headed to work in Sylhet, an attack that fellow writers said highlighted a culture of impunity.

Read: Third secular blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

“Murder won’t silence our mouths,” the protesters chanted as they marched along a key highway and through Sylhet university, a secular bastion.

“We want justice for Ananta and the other bloggers who have been murdered by Islamist militants. The government must crush this evil force,” Debashish Debu, a secular activist who joined the protest, said.

Das was the third blogger killed in the Muslim-majority nation since February when Bangladeshi-born US citizen Avijit Roy was hacked to death in the capital Dhaka.

The deaths have sparked international condemnation, with Washington on Tuesday calling on Dhaka to bring perpetrators of the latest killing to justice.

The activists had called for a strike in Sylhet on Wednesday, although police said offices and schools were mostly open and traffic was running almost as normal.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2015

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