8 ms·

Bangladesh blogger Ananta Bijoy Das hacked to death

76 points by syshackbot 11y ago

swombat 11y ago
That's a fair bit more substantial than the "death threats" that continually float about on both sides of debates like GamerGate and whatever. Very sad that this happens anywhere in the world. Surprised? Not entirely. This is the local Bangladeshi version of Charlie Hebdo...
- ritchiea 11y ago
  I find your comment to be thoroughly xenophobic and unwilling to face the reality of the United States. Sure, you aren't likely to literally get attacked by Islamists with machetes in the US. But minimizing the threats of gamergate violence is completely unnecessary and unrealistic. Is it really that difficult to imagine one of the gamergate threats to be from an individual like the UC Santa Barbara shooter or the Aurora Colorado shooter? Don't you think that's the worst fear of the women targeted by gamergate? And frankly, a legitimate fear based on events in the United State over the past 5-10 years? The United States has a huge public violence problem, it just happens to be different from the one in Bangladesh.
  - DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    Place A has online death threats where people are literally hacked to death. Place B has online death threats where nobody is injured yet a lot of people get upset. Xenophobia has nothing to do with it. It's a simple observation. Now if you followed up that observation with something like "And its because everybody who isn't in Place B are degenerate lunatics and shouldn't be trusted"? Then that's xenophobia. Get your terms straight. Online free speech is under attack in a lot of ways: government surveillance, social peer pressure, fundamentalist religions, and so forth. I don't think trotting out terms like "racist" or "xenophobe" helps in understanding or coming to terms with the problem.
    - ritchiea 11y ago
      At what point do we know that the persistent death threats are just kids being obnoxious and no one is going to be hurt? At what point would you personally be comfortable if your inbox was being blasted with threats of violence? And the only kind of xenophobia is the explicit, aggressive kind? So would you say the only kind of sexism is the kind where you must explicitly prohibit women from doing certain activities or holding certain roles? And the only kind of racism is the kind that existed in the American south prior to the late 60's?
      - swombat 11y ago
        > At what point do we know that the persistent death threats are just kids being obnoxious and no one is going to be hurt? Well, a partial answer to that may be: you never know whether the death threats are real or not until something like what is happening in Bangladesh happens. But once bloggers actually get hacked to death, you definitely do know, for sure. I don't think anyone would or should feel comfortable getting death threats via any medium. However, I know that I'd feel a lot less comfortable getting the same death threats in Bangladesh than in, say, Sweden, all other things being equal. Also, please stop bringing your bias to this discussion. I understand you're passionately on the "anti-GG" side of this debate. I'm not. I really don't care for either side. I'm sure you can make your points without turning this into yet another pointless threat arguing about "SJWs vs misogynist assholes". Let's not bring this crap to HN.
  - swombat 11y ago
    I think it's important to clarify your post with one simple fact: death threats and doxxing have occurred on both sides of the GG "debate" ("debacle" perhaps more accurate). Without that pointed out, you seem extremely biased. I wasn't taking any sides there, just making an observation about the level of violence experienced in Bangladesh vs the US.
    - ritchiea 11y ago
      That's fair. I actually hadn't heard of any death threats or doxxing coming from the pro-feminist side but it certainly wouldn't shock me. There's dark depths and fanaticism everywhere. But it does come off as smug and privileged to laugh off any of those threats. I can't imagine someone threatening my life and me feeling 100% comfortable that they're just doing it to intimidate me.
      - swombat 11y ago
        Milo Yiannopoulos has been fairly public, though blasé, about receiving death threats and even syringes in the post: https://twitter.com/nero/status/506435662481219585 https://twitter.com/nero/status/506435662481219585 https://twitter.com/nero/status/513666683916255232 https://twitter.com/nero/status/513666683916255232 I recall some others were threatened too, though I don't remember exactly. Not exactly worth spending brain cells on, tbh...
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  In practice, things are a little bit more one-sided. Also: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/university-mary-washington-yik-yak_n_7233702.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/university-mary-was...
seesomesense 11y ago
Religion of peace and all that...
- contingencies 11y ago
  There are nutcases (organized or otherwise) professing allegiance to all religions.
  - chroma 11y ago
    Yes, but different religions inspire different propensities towards violence in their hosts. Remember the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon? I doubt the Mormons liked the play's content, but they responded to it positively. In some venues, they even took out ads in the playbill. Do you think it would be possible for Trey Parker and Matt Stone to make a similar production about the Qu'ran? Even in the US, it would be a security nightmare. Venue owners, audiences, and production staff would all fear attacks.
    - seren 11y ago
      >Yes, but different religions inspire different propensities towards violence in their hosts. It is more complex than that. There is no on one side "good religions" and on the other side "bad religions". It is rather a combination of social and economics factors (education, poverty, exposure to other cultures, frustration, feeling of injustice (real or imagined), corruption, etc) The debate does not really interest me, but since you mentioned Mormon particularly, you are probably familiar with the following story : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
      - chroma 11y ago
        I totally agree that Mormonism used to be a rather terrible and violent religion. But please notice that you had to go back over 150 years to find such an atrocity committed by the Mormons. Their religion has changed drastically since then, thanks to collisions with secularism. Christianity used to be more barbarous as well, but centuries of progress have tamed it significantly. Let me give a more obvious example of religion's role in encouraging/discouraging violence: Jainism. The core contributor to Jainism, Mahavira, said, "All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away." It is really hard to be violent as a Jain. Jains protest by fasting. In fact, Gandhi got many of his ideas about nonviolent resistance from the Jains. Also, you didn't answer my question. Do you honestly think there is any religion besides Islam that would raise such security concerns if mocked in a Broadway musical? I agree that culture and other factors matter, but the doctrines of religions are quite different. Some of those doctrines call for violence more than others. The sooner we admit that, the sooner we can try to fix the problem.
ekianjo 11y ago
Wow, I did not expect the term "hacked" to be used in this meaning in the article. Pretty sad.
- fwr 11y ago
  Hacker News sounds a bit gruesome now
alinajaf 11y ago
As an atheist ex-muslim blogger of very similar descent, I don't see how this is relevant to hacker news. I sincerely doubt it will generate any useful discussion.
- jcruze 11y ago
  That means you're not fully ex-muslim yet.
contingencies 11y ago
To put this in some random hint of potential perspective, Sylhet is the center of the overseas Bengali community in Europe, ie. it's probably one of the most educated, wealthy and progressive parts of the country with the exception of the capital, Dhaka.
shrektillian 11y ago
aliens spells... alliance and they are nasty...
- shrektillian 11y ago
  de-mon translates as from-moon
1971genocide 11y ago
MY TIME TO SHINE : This hits so close to home ( my username ), Bangladesh has a serious problem with religious tolerance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Bangladesh_anti-Hindu_violence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Bangladesh_anti-Hindu_viol... Bangladesh has a population of about 20 million hindus who even if the number seems huge, are a minority given that the country has a huge population. I have been extremely fortunate to have had my dad make the sensible choice of abandoning his homeland for a job in Dubai which even if is not the best he could be doing. Is way better than being scared of your life. Most of my rest of family moved illegally to India and managed to get an Indian passport and are living peaceful lives. However it saddens me to see the situation in Bangladesh, since I have been there countless time and a lot of my cousins still live there. I also hold an bangladeshi passport. I really would want to do a tech job in bangladesh if given the opportunity. I am currently finishing in undergrad in an top British University and the situation here is so much nicer. One my goals is to one day open a research lab / company in bangladesh involving robotics. Bangladesh suffers from a lot of political corruption / cultural disintegration / poverty / natural disasters / education / . . . My dad sometimes worries about my online activities lol Since I am myself an atheist but I make sure to stay anonymous. My family due to so many problems in the past has adopted a closed mouth policy since we have lived all our lives in muslim majority countries. The only safe haven seems to be India. In any case these types of news is much more common if you keep in touch but I am surprised to see this becoming news here.
- WhitneyLand 11y ago
  Good luck to you. I sincerely hope you get the opportunity to work in your home without fear.
  - 1971genocide 11y ago
    Thanks ! There are a lot a new software startups in bangladesh that look really promising. They even advertised on npm ! http://www.newscred.com/careers http://www.newscred.com/careers I have been playing around the idea of applying for them.
Killah911 11y ago
These gruesome murders are obviously politically motivated. Aren't they inadvertently being helped by the media (not necessarily US media) who publish the grizzly photos of the victims. Just finished "Influence" by Chaldini, and I wonder if publicizing specific murders with gruesome details of death might inadvertently also be encouraging copycats.
themartorana 11y ago
Religion, held at any level above personal, is destructive to the larger population, in the long run. There is very little true tolerance from anyone who wishes religion to guide governing. It may be horribly violent attacks like this in Islam, but just as quickly it pushes for mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds in the U.S. I may get downvoted, but I fail to see how religion will ever help guide the human race to a better place. You may be able to point to impoverished places where missionaries are saving lives and providing support, and yes, that is fantastic. But just as quickly it turns into imprisoning homosexuals and local government policies being driven by religious dogma. Organized religion scares and saddens me. I wish it didn't, I'm aware there are many religious participants on HN. I do not mean to cause personal offense.
- brlewis 11y ago
  Religion is a pretense for violence, not the original motivation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pape#Dying_to_Win http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pape#Dying_to_Win Human power structures are what you should fear. A human in a powerful position will be motivated to silence voices that threaten that power.
  - themartorana 11y ago
    I fear them, too :)
- arethuza 11y ago
  Your comment reminded me the scene from Kingdom of Heaven where religion is discussed: I put no stock in Religion. By the word of religion, I've seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the "Will of God". I've seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. And goodness - what God desires - [pointing at his head then heart] is here and here. And what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man, [smiles] or not.
  - waps 11y ago

76 points by syshackbot 11y ago

That's a fair bit more substantial than the "death threats" that continually float about on both sides of debates like GamerGate and whatever. Very sad that this happens anywhere in the world. Surprised? Not entirely. This is the local Bangladeshi version of Charlie Hebdo...

ritchiea 11y ago
I find your comment to be thoroughly xenophobic and unwilling to face the reality of the United States. Sure, you aren't likely to literally get attacked by Islamists with machetes in the US. But minimizing the threats of gamergate violence is completely unnecessary and unrealistic. Is it really that difficult to imagine one of the gamergate threats to be from an individual like the UC Santa Barbara shooter or the Aurora Colorado shooter? Don't you think that's the worst fear of the women targeted by gamergate? And frankly, a legitimate fear based on events in the United State over the past 5-10 years? The United States has a huge public violence problem, it just happens to be different from the one in Bangladesh.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Place A has online death threats where people are literally hacked to death. Place B has online death threats where nobody is injured yet a lot of people get upset. Xenophobia has nothing to do with it. It's a simple observation. Now if you followed up that observation with something like "And its because everybody who isn't in Place B are degenerate lunatics and shouldn't be trusted"? Then that's xenophobia. Get your terms straight. Online free speech is under attack in a lot of ways: government surveillance, social peer pressure, fundamentalist religions, and so forth. I don't think trotting out terms like "racist" or "xenophobe" helps in understanding or coming to terms with the problem.
  - ritchiea 11y ago
    At what point do we know that the persistent death threats are just kids being obnoxious and no one is going to be hurt? At what point would you personally be comfortable if your inbox was being blasted with threats of violence? And the only kind of xenophobia is the explicit, aggressive kind? So would you say the only kind of sexism is the kind where you must explicitly prohibit women from doing certain activities or holding certain roles? And the only kind of racism is the kind that existed in the American south prior to the late 60's?
    - swombat 11y ago
      > At what point do we know that the persistent death threats are just kids being obnoxious and no one is going to be hurt? Well, a partial answer to that may be: you never know whether the death threats are real or not until something like what is happening in Bangladesh happens. But once bloggers actually get hacked to death, you definitely do know, for sure. I don't think anyone would or should feel comfortable getting death threats via any medium. However, I know that I'd feel a lot less comfortable getting the same death threats in Bangladesh than in, say, Sweden, all other things being equal. Also, please stop bringing your bias to this discussion. I understand you're passionately on the "anti-GG" side of this debate. I'm not. I really don't care for either side. I'm sure you can make your points without turning this into yet another pointless threat arguing about "SJWs vs misogynist assholes". Let's not bring this crap to HN.
- swombat 11y ago
  I think it's important to clarify your post with one simple fact: death threats and doxxing have occurred on both sides of the GG "debate" ("debacle" perhaps more accurate). Without that pointed out, you seem extremely biased. I wasn't taking any sides there, just making an observation about the level of violence experienced in Bangladesh vs the US.
  - ritchiea 11y ago
    That's fair. I actually hadn't heard of any death threats or doxxing coming from the pro-feminist side but it certainly wouldn't shock me. There's dark depths and fanaticism everywhere. But it does come off as smug and privileged to laugh off any of those threats. I can't imagine someone threatening my life and me feeling 100% comfortable that they're just doing it to intimidate me.
    - swombat 11y ago
      Milo Yiannopoulos has been fairly public, though blasé, about receiving death threats and even syringes in the post: https://twitter.com/nero/status/506435662481219585 https://twitter.com/nero/status/506435662481219585 https://twitter.com/nero/status/513666683916255232 https://twitter.com/nero/status/513666683916255232 I recall some others were threatened too, though I don't remember exactly. Not exactly worth spending brain cells on, tbh...
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
In practice, things are a little bit more one-sided. Also: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/university-mary-washington-yik-yak_n_7233702.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/university-mary-was...

seesomesense 11y ago

Religion of peace and all that...

contingencies 11y ago
There are nutcases (organized or otherwise) professing allegiance to all religions.
- chroma 11y ago
  Yes, but different religions inspire different propensities towards violence in their hosts. Remember the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon? I doubt the Mormons liked the play's content, but they responded to it positively. In some venues, they even took out ads in the playbill. Do you think it would be possible for Trey Parker and Matt Stone to make a similar production about the Qu'ran? Even in the US, it would be a security nightmare. Venue owners, audiences, and production staff would all fear attacks.
  - seren 11y ago
    >Yes, but different religions inspire different propensities towards violence in their hosts. It is more complex than that. There is no on one side "good religions" and on the other side "bad religions". It is rather a combination of social and economics factors (education, poverty, exposure to other cultures, frustration, feeling of injustice (real or imagined), corruption, etc) The debate does not really interest me, but since you mentioned Mormon particularly, you are probably familiar with the following story : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
    - chroma 11y ago
      I totally agree that Mormonism used to be a rather terrible and violent religion. But please notice that you had to go back over 150 years to find such an atrocity committed by the Mormons. Their religion has changed drastically since then, thanks to collisions with secularism. Christianity used to be more barbarous as well, but centuries of progress have tamed it significantly. Let me give a more obvious example of religion's role in encouraging/discouraging violence: Jainism. The core contributor to Jainism, Mahavira, said, "All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away." It is really hard to be violent as a Jain. Jains protest by fasting. In fact, Gandhi got many of his ideas about nonviolent resistance from the Jains. Also, you didn't answer my question. Do you honestly think there is any religion besides Islam that would raise such security concerns if mocked in a Broadway musical? I agree that culture and other factors matter, but the doctrines of religions are quite different. Some of those doctrines call for violence more than others. The sooner we admit that, the sooner we can try to fix the problem.

ekianjo 11y ago

Wow, I did not expect the term "hacked" to be used in this meaning in the article. Pretty sad.

fwr 11y ago
Hacker News sounds a bit gruesome now

alinajaf 11y ago

As an atheist ex-muslim blogger of very similar descent, I don't see how this is relevant to hacker news. I sincerely doubt it will generate any useful discussion.

jcruze 11y ago
That means you're not fully ex-muslim yet.

contingencies 11y ago

To put this in some random hint of potential perspective, Sylhet is the center of the overseas Bengali community in Europe, ie. it's probably one of the most educated, wealthy and progressive parts of the country with the exception of the capital, Dhaka.

shrektillian 11y ago

aliens spells... alliance and they are nasty...

shrektillian 11y ago
de-mon translates as from-moon

1971genocide 11y ago

MY TIME TO SHINE : This hits so close to home ( my username ), Bangladesh has a serious problem with religious tolerance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Bangladesh_anti-Hindu_violence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Bangladesh_anti-Hindu_viol... Bangladesh has a population of about 20 million hindus who even if the number seems huge, are a minority given that the country has a huge population. I have been extremely fortunate to have had my dad make the sensible choice of abandoning his homeland for a job in Dubai which even if is not the best he could be doing. Is way better than being scared of your life. Most of my rest of family moved illegally to India and managed to get an Indian passport and are living peaceful lives. However it saddens me to see the situation in Bangladesh, since I have been there countless time and a lot of my cousins still live there. I also hold an bangladeshi passport. I really would want to do a tech job in bangladesh if given the opportunity. I am currently finishing in undergrad in an top British University and the situation here is so much nicer. One my goals is to one day open a research lab / company in bangladesh involving robotics. Bangladesh suffers from a lot of political corruption / cultural disintegration / poverty / natural disasters / education / . . . My dad sometimes worries about my online activities lol Since I am myself an atheist but I make sure to stay anonymous. My family due to so many problems in the past has adopted a closed mouth policy since we have lived all our lives in muslim majority countries. The only safe haven seems to be India. In any case these types of news is much more common if you keep in touch but I am surprised to see this becoming news here.

WhitneyLand 11y ago
Good luck to you. I sincerely hope you get the opportunity to work in your home without fear.
- 1971genocide 11y ago
  Thanks ! There are a lot a new software startups in bangladesh that look really promising. They even advertised on npm ! http://www.newscred.com/careers http://www.newscred.com/careers I have been playing around the idea of applying for them.

Killah911 11y ago

These gruesome murders are obviously politically motivated. Aren't they inadvertently being helped by the media (not necessarily US media) who publish the grizzly photos of the victims. Just finished "Influence" by Chaldini, and I wonder if publicizing specific murders with gruesome details of death might inadvertently also be encouraging copycats.

themartorana 11y ago

Religion, held at any level above personal, is destructive to the larger population, in the long run. There is very little true tolerance from anyone who wishes religion to guide governing. It may be horribly violent attacks like this in Islam, but just as quickly it pushes for mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds in the U.S. I may get downvoted, but I fail to see how religion will ever help guide the human race to a better place. You may be able to point to impoverished places where missionaries are saving lives and providing support, and yes, that is fantastic. But just as quickly it turns into imprisoning homosexuals and local government policies being driven by religious dogma. Organized religion scares and saddens me. I wish it didn't, I'm aware there are many religious participants on HN. I do not mean to cause personal offense.

brlewis 11y ago
Religion is a pretense for violence, not the original motivation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pape#Dying_to_Win http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pape#Dying_to_Win Human power structures are what you should fear. A human in a powerful position will be motivated to silence voices that threaten that power.
- themartorana 11y ago
  I fear them, too :)
arethuza 11y ago
Your comment reminded me the scene from Kingdom of Heaven where religion is discussed: I put no stock in Religion. By the word of religion, I've seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the "Will of God". I've seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. And goodness - what God desires - [pointing at his head then heart] is here and here. And what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man, [smiles] or not.
- waps 11y ago