The killing of bloggers in Bangladesh and the “slow pace of response by authorities" have put the country onto the Global Impunity Index prepared by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The Impunity Index of the CPJ "spotlights countries where journalists are slain and the killers go free."

"The ambush of a convoy in South Sudan and the hacking deaths of bloggers in Bangladesh propelled the two nations onto the Committee to Protect Journalists' Global Impunity Index of countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go unpunished," according to a CPJ report published yesterday.

A wave of violence against bloggers has landed Bangladesh back onto the index for the first time since 2011, the report said in its Bangladesh section.

It said at least four Bangladeshi bloggers have been hacked to death by apparent Islamic extremists this year alone, and a total of five of the seven victims of unsolved murders over the last decade are bloggers who criticised religious extremism.

According to the report, brazen attacks against bloggers like Amencan-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.

"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," it said.

One colleague told CPJ, "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.

CPJ's 2015 Global Impunity Index spotlights 14 countries, including Bangladesh, where journalists are slain and the killers go free.

ft further said that in the 14 countries at least five journalists have been murdered without a single perpetrator being convicted. The index covers murders that took place between September 1, 2005, and August 31, 2015.

The countries are Somalia, Iraq, Syria, The Philippines, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria and India.