The hacking deaths of bloggers in Bangladesh this year propelled the country onto Global Impunity Index of Community to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
According to the survey released on Thursday, Bangladesh ranked 12 among 14 countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go unpunished.
The report reads: “A wave of violence against bloggers has landed Bangladesh back onto the index for the first time since 2011.”
Bangladesh was not on the 2014 index.
IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.044 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants
According to the report, at least four Bangladeshi bloggers have been hacked to death by apparent Islamic extremists this year alone, and a total of five of Bangladesh's seven victims of unsolved murders over the last decade are bloggers who criticized religious extremism.
“Brazen attacks against bloggers like American-Bangladeshi Avijit Roy, who was pulled from a rickshaw by machete-wielding assailants outside a book fair in Dhaka, have been followed by a handful of arrests, but in only one case since 2005, Gautam Das, have the perpetrators been tried and convicted,” it added.
It also criticised the role of the government citing that “Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the nominally secular ruling Awami League party have done little to speak out for justice in these crimes, allowing political interests to trump rule of law.
"Authorities seem more concerned with what bloggers are writing than going after their killers."
In the wake of this unchecked terror, several bloggers have fled into exile, it added.
Methodology
CPJ's Impunity Index calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country's population. For this index, CPJ examined journalist murders that occurred between September 1, 2005, and August 31, 2015, and that remain unsolved. Only those nations with five or more unsolved cases are included on this index.
CPJ defines murder as a deliberate attack against a specific journalist in relation to the victim's work. Murders make up nearly 70% of work-related deaths among journalists, according to CPJ research. This index does not include cases of journalists killed in combat or while carrying out dangerous assignments such as coverage of street protests.
Cases are considered unsolved when no convictions have been obtained. Cases in which some but not all suspects have been convicted are classified as partial impunity in CPJ's comprehensive database of journalists killed in the line of duty.
Cases in which the suspected perpetrators were killed during apprehension are also categorized as partial impunity. The index only analyses murders that have been carried out with complete impunity; it does not include those where partial justice has been achieved. Population data from the World Bank's 2014 World Development Indicators were used in calculating each country's rating.
