Avijit Roy was a Bangladeshi-American engineer, online activist, writer, and blogger known for creating and administrating the Mukto-Mona, an Internet blogging community for Bangladeshi freethinkers, rationalists, skeptics, atheists, and humanists.
15 Facts About Avijit Roy
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Avijit Roy was killed by machete-wielding assailants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 26 February 2015; the Islamic militant organization Ansarullah Bangla Team claimed responsibility for the attack.
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Avijit Roy was the son of Ajoy Roy, a professor of physics at the University of Dhaka, who received the Ekushey Padak award.
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Avijit Roy earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from BUET, and a master's and doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from the National University of Singapore.
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Avijit Roy was the founder of the Bangladeshi Mukto-Mona website, which was nominated for The Bobs Award in the Best of Online Activism category.
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Avijit Roy had received death threats from fundamentalist bloggers for his articles and books.
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Avijit Roy's blog was shut down by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, and he was jailed for posting "offensive comments about Islam and Mohammed".
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Avijit Roy wrote that he was disgusted that the Bangladeshi media portrayed young bloggers as "crooks in the public eye" and wrote to Western media outlets, the Center for Inquiry, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union for support.
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Avijit Roy went on to coordinate international protests in Dhaka, New York City, Washington, DC, London, Ottawa, and other cities in support of the jailed bloggers.
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Avijit Roy was joined by writers, activists, and prominent secularists and intellectuals around the world including Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin, Hemant Mehta, Maryam Namazie, PZ Myers, Anu Muhammad, Ajoy Roy, Qayyum Chowdhury, Ramendu Majumdar and Muhammad Zafar Iqbal in publicly expressing their solidarity with the arrested bloggers.
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In 2015, Avijit Roy went to Dhaka with his wife Bonya Ahmed during the Ekushey Book Fair.
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Avijit Roy was struck and stabbed with sharp weapons in the head.
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Avijit Roy's wife was slashed on her shoulders, and the fingers of her left hand were severed.
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Avijit Roy's body was placed at Aparajeyo Bangla in front of the Faculty of Arts building at Dhaka University on 1 March 2015, where people from all walks of life, including his friends, relatives, well-wishers, teachers, and students, gathered with flowers to pay their respect to the writer.
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Avijit Roy was targeted simply for expressing his beliefs, and we are appalled by his death and condemn all such killings.