Author: Ashoke Dasgupta
Publication: Organiser
Date: May 1, 2005
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=76&page=39
It is not that Indian people-legislators,
political leaders, journalists, writers or other groups of professionals
or individual intellectuals have not known, more or less, about the endlessly
raging State-sponsored campaign of religious and ethnic cleansing or genocide
against Bangladesh's minorities. While repression of the people in Palestine,
Kurdistan or Bosnia or Eastern Timorese do raise sensitive protests and
condemnation from all shades of secularists in India, a mysterious silence
is maintained in respect of religious minority persecution (Hindu-Buddhist-Christians)
and ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh.
Under the patronage of 'Islamic
hardliners' (as per The Guardian, October 2001) led by the BNP, the government
of Bangladesh has slided down to become a 'stronghold of militant Islam'
(as per the New York Post, October 22, 2002). Islamic terrorists, working
in league with the Taliban and A1-Qaeda warriors (The Time Magazine, October
14, 2002) are systematically cleansing the religious and ethnic minorities
in Bangladesh. And then, they do export trained Jehadis abroad to assist
militant Islamic groups engaged in Talibanising other democratic societies
(as per the A1 Ahram, September 11-17, 2003).
'Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist and Christian
Unity Council, USA', has stated in 'Bangladesh: A Portrait of convert Genocide'-a
very well documented and authentic review-that 'the campaign of atrocities
against the minorities, particularly against the Hindus, that had been
seer with the Noakhali massacre of 1946 has really never ceased. The Islamic
extremist political parties have continually conducted programmes against
them. Successive governments have blatantly discriminated against them
and even employed the law enforcement agencies to conduct atrocities against
them. Using an anti-minority or racist law called the Enemy Property Act,
(enemy is the Hindu who sought refuge in India), they have seized 2.5 million
acres of prime land belonging to Hindus; and, by sending Muslim settlers
supported by the armed forces, they have evicted tens of thousands of Indo-Mongoloid
tribal people from their centuries-old autonomous habitat, the Chittagong
Hill Tracts, thus Islamising the region. On April 10, 1992, the armed forces
themselves murdered several hundred tribals in the village of Lonang in
Chittagong Hill Tracts and razed the entire village to the ground. The
stated facts are very discreetly told; the detailed report must be more
gruesome. Only one factual statement will show the truth-the Muslim population
in Chittagong Hill Tracts was only 3 per cent in 1947; it rose to 50 per
cent in 1997.
In 1988, Islam was declared as the
State religion in Bangladesh. The 'Islamic hardliners' assumed in the government
power in 2001 and the anti-religious minority campaign swiftly turned into
genocide.
The massive evidences, file photographs,
documented narrations contained in the 'Bangladesh': A Portrait of Covert
Genocide' prepared by the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist and Christian Unity
Council, USA, distinctly show that the atrocities are in the nature of:
1. desecration, razing of temples and churches; 2. looting, burning, capturing
of dwelling houses minorities; 3. robbing rifle businesses belonging to
the minorities; 4. extortion of infidel tax; 5. atrocious persecution and
torture, and gang rape and murder (as a brutal means of ethnic cleansing).
Innumerable instances are available on both gang and mass rape of women:
200 Hindu women in one night at a single spot in Chor Fashion, Bhola (The
Daily Star, November 16, 2001); rape of a mother and daughter together
with the father/husband forced to watch (the Daily Janakantha, January
28 & 29, 2002, February 17, 2002) the gruesome murders, including the
burning of entire families alive, the Sil family of Banskhali (The Economist,
November 29, December 5, 2003; The Bangladesh Observer November 20, 2003).
These are just samples to show what the reality is like.
Millions of minorities have had
to seek refuge in India being unable to bear any longer the unabated rape,
murder, torture and persecution. The reports of Salam Azad 2003; US Committee
for Refugees, Country Report 2002; Refugees International, August, 2003;
BBC News, November 20, 2002 News from Bangladesh (NFB), May 29, 2002-all
exhibit how this exodus relentlessly continues due to such ghastly persecution.
Had there been no such relentless expulsion or conversion of minorities
to Islam, the population of minority religious communities in Bangladesh
would have been 62 million, whereas now it is only 15 million and this
15 million will certainly be cleansed within a few years if the BNP-terrorist
Al Qaeda-ISI combine continues their progrom at the present pace.
On April 10, 1992, the Khaleda Zia
government employed the Bangladesh Army to conduct the Logang massacre.
Records reveal that US Law Makers, the European Union, Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch, the European ambassadors to Bangladesh had, on various
occasions, urged Khaleda Zia to stop atrocities on religious minorities.
Khaleda Zia not only remained unresponsive, but she adopted the process
of denial and deception.
In the said documented report 'Bangladesh
Hindu, Buddhist and Christian Unity Council, USA' has raised a very pertinent
question: "India would have done much better if she had acted two decades
ago and reversed the ominous course the country has taken. But India decided
to stand by as the once secular Bangladesh was gradually turned into a
'breeding ground' for Islamic militants. Even after October 2001, when
the campaign of atrocities against the minorities skyrocketed and minorities
began to stream into India we failed to act.
