HE series of killings in Bangladesh are reason to feel nothing less than outright alarm, both for the country and the region.

The brutal murder in Dhaka on Saturday of Faysal Arefin is the latest in a series of grievous attacks on people committed to putting into the public domain secular and liberal ideas. Arefin was the chief of the Jagriti Prokashoni publishing house, which published the work of Avijit Roy, who was similarly hacked to death in February. If the crime is horrifying, so is the cold implacability of the perpetrators, who gained access to the office by posing as customers and then locked themselves into a room with their victim before carrying out their intent. Earlier, the same day, publisher Ahmed Rahim Tutul, also a publisher of Roy`s work, and writers Ranadeep Basu and Tariq Rahim were shot and stabbed in another publishing house`s office space; the three attackers locked the wounded men into the room before getting away. These are only the most recent in a series of such attacks this year alone, four bloggers, accused of being atheists, have been killed. What appeared as randomised acts of mob violence is now taking on the look of a sustained and targeted bloodbath.

The Bangladesh researcher of Amnesty International, Abbas Faiz, has stated: `The situation is becoming increasingly dangerous for those brave enough to speak their own minds.` The Bangladesh authorities need to take note of the fact that the theatre of violence is not just expanding with publishers now joining the ranks of targets where earlier it was just bloggers it may also be forging links with other extremist elements such as the self-styled Islamic State (which has claimed responsibility for three other, similar attacks in the country). The government of Sheikh Hasina has taken an unyielding position against the Islamists including those in the political mainstream; that this might be pushing them further towards the right and towards increased brutality is an indication of just how difficult it is to tackle this issue.