Author: Richard L Benkin
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 9, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/181782/Strange-silence-on-Islamist-terror.html
Obama should have spoken up for the Hindus
in Pakistan and Bangladesh who face terrible atrocities. But he has chosen
to remain stunningly silent on South Asia's 'Hindu Holocaust'
There is growing concern in the United States
over President Barack Obama's foreign policy, especially in South Asia and
West Asia. Although Mr Obama still enjoys media support and spillover goodwill
from the election, more Americans are questioning his policies' wisdom. He
is alienating friends and trying to woo enemies; pushing away his strongest
allies in the war against Islamist extremism, Israel and India, and pretending
that nations behind global jihad (Iran and Pakistan) will help defeat it.
Even members of his own party are wary. When
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently appeared before the US House Appropriations
Committee to deliver the Obama line on Israel, it was Democrat Nita Lowey
(along with Republican Mark Kirk) who replied that if the Administration was
going to tie Israel's hands, the House would counter by "restricting
aid to the Palestinian Authority".
Missing in the debate thus far has been concern
for the developing 'Hindu Holocaust' in South Asia. In several policy pronouncements
numerous speeches about the situation in South Asia, Mr Obama never once mentioned
the human rights disaster that is rapidly bringing an end to the remaining
Pakistani Hindu community. Nor has protecting 13,000,000 Bangladeshi Hindus
ever figured in his grand design for South Asia.
While President Obama speaks of the need for
international support and regional cooperation, he never once suggested that
international aid be sent to care for the thousands of Pakistani Hindus who
have been streaming into Indian Punjab. He has never challenged human rights
groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to investigate regularly-reported
atrocities against Bangladeshi Hindus and the ensuing refugee nightmare; nor
has he ever suggested that Bangladesh's Vested Property Act is a racist law
that is incompatible with his vision of peace in South Asia.
To be sure, the destruction of Pakistan's
Hindus has taken several decades, and it has taken three decades to reduce
Hindus from under one in five Bangladeshis to under one in 10; so, silence
about it cannot be laid at Mr Obama's feet alone. But in Mr Barack Obama,
Americans have a leader with a grand scheme for what he expects to be the
future of South Asia to be - evidently a South Asia that tolerates anti-Hindu
ethnic cleansing by Muslim radicals. At the very least, Mr Obama should be
demanding help for the victims - no less so than that given the 'Palestinian
refugees' who have an entire UN agency devoted to them.
Evidence of atrocities continues to pour in
almost daily. If the US and India tolerate it, we can hardly expect the weak
civilian Governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh to act. In March, I interviewed
several victims in West Bengal myself. Most poignant was the testimony of
a Hindu family that had crossed into India only 22 days earlier with their
14-year-old daughter who told me about being gang-raped by Islamist radicals
in Bangladesh. The 'Hindu Holocaust' is real and it is happening now. Will
an outraged world act or do what it normally does and cry for the victims
only after their death?
In 1941, Western Allies began getting intelligence
about the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews and others. Some initially dismissed
the reports but eventually recognised their veracity. In the end, though,
they said the best way to help the victims was to win the war and so did nothing.
If that's Mr Obama's guide, he had better check his history. Because the vast
majority of Holocaust victims were murdered after the Allies decided to help
the victims by ignoring them.
