Author: Shaikh Azizur Rahman
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: December 10, 2001
More than 17,000 supporters of the
defeated Awami League government in Bangladesh have fled to India in the
past two months, the great majority of them Hindus who complain of murder,
rape and looting at the hands of fundamentalist Muslims backing the newly
elected Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
Some Indian officials say the violence
is motivated by politics, not religious differences, and that many of the
refugees are simply economically driven migrants seeking relief from the
endemic poverty in Bangladesh. But nationalist Hindu parties in India have
taken up the cause of the refugees, demanding that the government in New
Delhi defend them.
Authorities in Dhaka have offered
to welcome back the refugees and to ensure their security, but the promises
ring hollow for people like 39-year-old Shefali, who brought her three
children from Bhola in southern Bangladesh to stay with a relative in Habra,
25 miles east of Calcutta.
Muslim fundamentalists "raped me
and my 10-year-old daughter. Those beasts raped 14 or 15 girls and women
in our village. How can I return to that country?" she asked.
"Newspapers reported with our pictures
how we were tortured there. Now if we go back, they will lynch us," said
the woman, who withheld her full name for fear of reprisals against her
husband, who remains in Bangladesh trying to sell the family's property
before joining her in India.
Another refugee, Mita Roy, said
in the frontier West Bengal town of Thakurnagar that she had fled with
her three children as soon as she learned that armed Muslims had attacked
her village, Purba Sahera. She paid an "agent" who arranges illegal border
crossings to help them get into India. "I was terribly afraid of my 16-year-old
daughter being
lifted by them," she said, adding
that her 7-year-old son, Loknath, is suffering from high fever and is raving
incoherently. A doctor has diagnosed the problem as post-traumatic stress
disorder, caused by the violence the boy witnessed.
Indian authorities have made light
of the dangers. The interior minister, L. K. Advani, said in Parliament
last week that Bangladeshis who had crossed into India should go home.
He also expressed hope that the Dhaka government would make arrangements
for their safety.
The attacks on Hindus, who make
up 10 percent of Bangladesh's 130 million population, started as soon as
Sheik Hasina handed over power to a caretaker administration in July, before
the elections.
Leaders of Bangladesh's anti-fundamentalist
groups say the Hindus were targeted by the fundamentalists of the BNP and
its allies because they were seen as Awami League voters.
According to Kabir Choudhury of
the South Asian Coalition Against Fundamentalism, about 325 Awami League
supporters - both Hindus and Muslims - have been killed in Bangladesh since
July. The group says more than 15,000 Hindus and 2,500 Muslim supporters
of the Awami League have fled into the east Indian states of West Bengal
and Tripura in the last two months.
But Biman Bose, chairman of the
Left Front party in communist-ruled West Bengal, where most of the Bangladesh
Hindus have taken refuge, maintained that the turmoil is based on politics,
not religion.
He said Bangladeshi migrants had
been coming to India in search of better economic prospects ever since
the nation achieved independence, much as poor Mexicans come to the United
States. "There is nothing new in it," he said.
Nevertheless, Hindu nationalist
parties like Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
believe the attack on Hindus in Bangladesh was motivated by religion.
"We are not happy at India's weak-kneed
response to the problems of the problems of these Hindu refugees," said
Y. Raghaballu, national secretary of VHP. "The central government must
declare the minorities fleeing persecution in Bangladesh as refugees, not
infiltrators. Otherwise it will be a sin against humanity."
