Controversial author Salman Rushdie has joined fellow Booker Prize winners and celebrated writers like Amitav Ghosh and Margaret Atwood to appeal to Bangladesh Government to do “all in its power” to punish the killers of three secular bloggers who were hacked to death recently.
More than 150 writers from around the world, including Mumbai-born Rushdie — whose work has angered Muslims around the world, have expressed their “grave concern” due to this “escalating pattern of violence against writers and journalists who are peacefully expressing their views”.
Kolkata-born writers Ghosh and Neel Mukherjee besides novelist Rohinton Mistry are among the writers, who have called on the Sheikh Hasina-led Government in Bangladesh in an appeal through ‘The Guardian’ “to ensure that the tragic events of the last three months are not repeated, and to bring the perpetrators to justice”.
They have added their names to an open letter that comes days after machete-wielding masked men hacked to death 33-year-old blogger Ananta Bijoy Das in Bangladesh in the third such attack by Islamists since February in the Muslim- majority nation.