Bonya Ahmed is herself a writer and was also married to perhaps the most famous atheist killed this year, Avijit Roy - the moderator of a popular online blog called "Free Thinking," which defended secular and humanist ideas.
She and her husband were attacked together in February. Bonya lost fingers and was scarred, but lived. Her husband was hacked to death with machetes in a manner that followed the same gruesome pattern of later killings. They had returned home from the US, where they lived, to the Dhaka Book Fair.
The back story to Bangladesh's blogger murders is complex, but here are the facts in brief: in recent years, a group of people who deny the existence of God, some using rational arguments and others using dark and satirical humour, has grown up on the Bangladeshi internet. Other internet bloggers are not atheists, but instead better described as secular campaigners: they use the internet to strongly argue that religion should be kept out of politics. [BBC] Read more
