In a letter to Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid, Christoph Strässer, the President of the Humanist Association of Germany, Frieder Otto Wolf, has called on the German Federal Government to make a stronger international commitment to freedom of religion and belief and freedom of expression.
The reason for this is the murder of an atheist blogger in Bangladesh last Friday. As reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and others on August 9, 2015, a group of radical Islamists broke into the home of Niloy Chakrabarty (alias Niloy Neel) in the capital Dhaka after Friday prayers and killed the 40-year-old with machetes. The victim’s wife had to listen to the death cries and the hacking of the machetes from behind a locked door. It was the fourth murder of this kind in Bangladesh this year. All previous victims had criticized religious fundamentalist movements in their country in blogs or on Facebook and received death threats from Islamic hardliners. The names of the bloggers killed so far are on a list of 84 people that Islamists had submitted to the government and who they wanted to see persecuted for “atheism”. Two of the Bangladeshi people directly affected by attacks and death threats, Asif Mohiuddin and Ananya Azad, were able to escape with the help of the
Hamburg Foundation for Politically Persecuted Persons
were able to find temporary refuge in Germany. Humanitarians around the world had condemned the latest shocking act in no uncertain terms and called on the country’s government to guarantee freedom of religion and belief and freedom of expression, as well as appealing to the embassies of other countries in Bangladesh to respond immediately and seriously to all requests for help from secular bloggers or journalists. In a statement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed “deep concern” about the atrocious crimes and their impact on the exercise of freedom of expression in Bangladesh. In his letter, Frieder Otto Wolf asked the Federal Foreign Minister and the Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid “urgently to condemn these systematic murders in Bangladesh on the part of the Federal Government and to exert your influence with the Bangladeshi government.” In addition, the Federal Republic of Germany should also lobby the United Nations to clearly outlaw such acts of bloodshed internationally so that freedom of religion and belief and the right to freedom of expression can also be exercised by non-religious people in other countries.
