Fighting Machetes with Pens – The Voltaire Lecture 2015

The British Humanist Association presents the 2015 Voltaire Lecture, delivered by Bonya Ahmed.

On 26 February, Bonya Ahmed and her husband Avijit Roy, both humanist bloggers, were visiting the national book fair of Bangladesh. Just outside Dhaka University, they were attacked with machetes by Islamic fundamentalists. Bonya was severely wounded and Avijit himself was killed.

"I wake at midnight and see Avijit’s bloody body on the street. In the silence of the afternoon I can hear sounds coming from the injured, semiconscious Avijit lying beside me in the hospital. When the doctor removes the stitches from the cleaver wounds in my head, I feel rattled. I’m startled when I spot my left hand missing my thumb.
In the British Humanist Association's 2015 Voltaire Lecture, Bonya will speak about her life with Avijit, their struggle for Humanism and secularism in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Threats to free speech and reason are on the rise as religious ideologies spread and government complicity means inaction and injustice. Humanists, she will argue, must understand this threat and stand firm in defence of the human right to free expression.

Society does not move ahead in a straight line: sometimes it stumbles; sometimes it moves step by slow step; sometimes, empowered by the strength of the people, it forges ahead. Today, in the wake of countless injustices, murders, anarchy, and corruption, the people who gaze uncomprehendingly at the immobile body on the sidewalk hacked by cleavers, the people who cannot even think of stepping up to help, perhaps one day they will awaken".

About the British Humanist Association
The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. It promotes a secular state and equal treatment in law and policy of everyone, regardless of religion or belief.