The dead, it is said, do not live to tell the tale, but this
is not true in ethnic cleansing. The dead do tell the tale; it is the living
who are reluctant to speak." -- Horowitz, 2001, p. 224
We now know the Holocaust of the Jews, Hitler’s “Final
Solution of the Jewish Question”, which is written in history with human blood.
The “Final Solution” of some kind of a different by murderers of different
religious belief in a country has been occurring over the last four decades. I
am talking about the ethnic cleansing of the Hindus in Bangladesh. And
yes, as Horowitz said, listen carefully to every dead human. Each one of them
has a tragic story to tell; pay attention and you will hear an unmistakable whisper
in their silence, the stories of their suffering and injustice caused to them
because of their minority status in a Muslim majority country. Those who are
still fortunate enough to live for few more days are in mental wreck so much so
that they are all living dead. Today not only the victims, but also the
humanity itself cries bitterly for your attention.
Government of Bangladesh has published many
Census documents. In 1941, 28.3% of the population was minorities. Out of this,
of Hindu was 11.88 million, while 588 thousand was other religious and ethnic
minorities, like Buddhist, Christian and animist. As per the 1991 Census, the
Muslim majority increased by 219.5%, while the Hindu community increased by
4.5%. If usual increase rate prevailed, the number of the Hindu community would
have been 32.5 million in 1991, but the actual figure is 12.5 million. It means
twenty million Hindu souls were missing. (Samad, 1998)
Is the Bangladesh Government ready to give a satisfactory
explanation, how those twenty million souls had vanished in fifty years?
Did they vanish into thin air like a Houdini magic?
No! In the course of Bangladesh's
1971 war of independence, a large number of Hindus were targeted for
extermination, like the Jews in Hitler’s Germany, by the Islamist Pakistani
government and their Bengali collaborators. Many of those twenty million Hindus
were put to permanent rest in mass-graves in unknown places or mass cremated
anonymously and unceremoniously or their dead-bodies thrown into the rivers.
Many of them were forcefully converted to Islam. Many of their women were
brutally raped and reduced to prostitution. And yet, many of them were victims
of forced exodus to neighboring India,
after Muslim hooligans evicted them penniless from their homes and properties.
Sadly, most of these atrocities had approval of the
Government of Bangladesh. The so-called Muslim intellectuals and ‘secular’
politicians deliberately promoted the view and made the common Bangladeshi
Muslims believe that the ethnic minorities are migrants and not ‘Bhumiputra’
(son of the soil). The Home Ministry had instructed the commercial banks to
control withdrawal of substantial cash money against account holders of Hindu
community and to stop disbursement of business loans to Hindu community in the districts
adjoining the India-Bangladesh border (Samad, 1998). It’s an unwritten law in Bangladesh,
that the religious minorities cannot be given sensitive positions, like head of
state, chief of armed forces, governor of Bangladesh Bank, Ambassador in a Bangladesh
Mission, or secretary in the ministry of Defence, Home, Foreign Affairs and
Finance. Minorities are deliberately discriminated in recruitment in civil and
military jobs, business and trade, bank loans and credit (Shaha, 1998, p. 5).
The mainstream political parties also cannot accept that their leader could be
from among the minority community. It is rare to find a religious minority at
the helms of affairs in Bangladesh.
Can the Government of Bangladesh deny the fact that the
Minorities are “Legally identified enemies” in their homeland, where they are
living for many generations?
It’s a shame! Instead of protecting the minorities, the
Government of Bangladesh had always tried to hide the whole gamut of torture,
rape and murder incidents behind a fabric of lies.
The Bangladeshi Government officially encourages forced
conversion to Islam by giving incentive. As per B.D. government religious
ministry circular number 2/a-7/91-92 dated 28 November 1991, the new Muslims
are paid cash doles through budgetary allocations in the name of so-called
rehabilitation (Press Release, nd).
For writing this article, the present author had interviewed
many Bangladeshi refugees and liberal Muslims, gone through their websites and
newspapers, and read many books and articles. This article will enumerate many
facts, which the World is unaware of.
To begin with, let’s see how much freedom Bangladeshi
government has given to minorities. The Constitution of 1972 pronounced
secularism as a fundamental principal of state policy. Article 41 guarantees
freedom of religion in Bangladesh
and Article 12 has provided an interpretation of the principle of secularism
that made Bangladesh
a multi-religious society and maintained separation between state and religion.
But this Article was discarded in 1977 and subsequent constitutional changes
under military rulers compromised the principle of secularism and gave rise to
religion-based politics. Under General Ziaur Rahman (1976–1981), the 5th
amendment of the constitution was effected. Under this amendment, the principle
of “secularism” was replaced by “faith in Almighty Allah” [Article 8 (1)]; and
the amended Article 8 .1(a) states: “absolute trust and faith in the Almighty
Allah should be the basis of all actions”. Gen. H. M. Ershed through the 8th
Amendment declared Islam as the state religion. The constitution, in fact,
makes its beginning with the words Bismillah-ar-rahman-ar-rahim.
While Articles 27–29 confirms equal opportunities for all
citizens, Article 44 equivocally guarantees the enforcement of fundamental
rights, and Sections 295–298 of the Penal Code give protection from offences
against religious places or practices, the reality is far too different.
Minorities are never adequately represented. In the seventh Parliament, there
were only 11 male and three female members belonging to minority communities.
Taken together minority groups occupied only 4.24 percent seats in Parliament,
though they form 12% of the total population. Democracy is a rich man’s game in
Bangladesh.
Business is the primary or secondary occupation of about 75% of the elected
representatives (Barman et al, nd).
The political parties, despite electoral promises written in
election manifestos, failed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the minorities.
Not a single political party has ever come forward for a cause of the
minorities (Shaha, 1998, p.5). Ain O Shalish Kendra (1999, p.192) reported:
The constitutional amendments have introduced an overt bias
towards Muslims in public policy and practice and encouraged discrimination
against other religious communities… with the increasing politicization of
Islam by the state and political organizations, religious minorities fear that
an escalation of religious discrimination may stigmatize them as second class
citizens and lead to religious intolerance.
Bangladesh is on her way to become a ‘Talibanistan’ and the
state religion Islam is helping the process by killing and displacing
minorities, be it the Hindus, Christians, Buddhists or Animists. Islamic extremists
often target temples, churches, and libraries etc. of minorities in an effort
to eradicate their cultural memory. Islamic extremists have already formed a
shadow government in Bangladesh.
Roads of Bangladesh
are shacked with the slogan “We are Taliban and Bangla Will be Afghan”. It’s
long since democracy had died in Bangladesh and the Islamic
theocracy had triumphed. In the near future, Bangladesh will become a major
threat to world peace and security.
Ethnic cleansing of Minorities in Bangladesh
(then East Pakistan) started in 1946 with the
infamous Noakhali carnage (10th October 1946). In the full-moon night of
Kojagari Lakshi Puja (a Hindu festival), 218 Hindus were slaughtered, over
10,000 Hindu houses were looted, more than 2000 Hindus were forcibly converted
to Islam and several thousand Hindu women were raped and hundreds of Hindu
temples were destroyed. The sad part is that Mr. Burrows, the then Governor of
state, said that it was only natural that Hindu women would be raped by
hundreds of Muslims because they are prettier than Muslim women (Roy, 2007, p.
120,165).
During the infamous genocide of 1971, which continued for
nine months, by the then Muslim East Pakistan Army, up to three million
Bangladeshis were slaughtered, ten million Hindus fled as refugees to India (Kennedy,
1971, p. 6-7) and two hundred thousand women were raped (Roy, 2007, p. 298).
The neighboring Muslims of the Hindu families use to mark a yellow “H” on the
Hindu houses to guide the marauding army to their targets like the Jewish
holocaust (Schanberg, 1994). The bulk of the victims of the 1971 East Pakistan holocaust were Hindus, about 80%, followed
by Muslims (15%) and Christians (5%) (Roy, 2007, p. 312).
Minority oppression has increased tremendously after the
October 2001 National Election in Bangladesh. The thugs of the
pro-Islam Bangladesh Nationalist Party and their Islamic ally, Jamaat-e-Islami,
beat up the Hindus, Christians and Buddhists. Their political involvement is
strongly opposed by the nationalist-Islamist political parties, with many
Hindus being prevented from voting in elections, through intimidation or
exclusion from voter-lists (The Daily Star. January 4, 2006). Often the Hindus
are warned that if they want to vote their women would be violated; they would
be made to leave Bangladesh.
A third method is physically preventing the Hindus from voting. The
nationalist-Islamist party thugs act as vigilantes to prevent Hindus from going
to polling centers, mainly in rural areas (Roy, 2007, pp. 359, 152). The government
does nothing to ensure a free and fair election.
Kidnapping and rape of women and children, forced marriage
of minor girls, extortion of money as Jizya tax, forced conversion and murder
of members of the minority communities are a day-to-day happening. Hindu widows
are often forced to kill one of her cow by her own hand, cook the beef and eat
it and become Muslim (Roy, 2007. p 120,125).
Many families migrate out of their “Homeland” since time
immemorial for physical safety. And there is no end in sight. It is because
this ‘Hindu Holocaust’ is fully intentional and approved or connived by the
government, aiming to wipe out the entire minority to turn Bangladesh
purely Islamic. The situation is so alarming that, while describing the plight
of minorities in Bangladesh,
The published an article (Nov. 29, 2003) with the heading: “Bangladesh's
religious minorities: Safe only in the departure lounge”. (cited Dutta, 2005).
A list of prominent incidents from various sources are given below:
Hindu women (from age 8 to 70) are often subjected to gang
rape. About 200 Hindu women were gang raped by Muslims in Char Fashion, Bhola,
in one night at a single spot (The Daily Star, Nov. 16, 2001)
The Islamic terrorists have levied Jizya taxes on the
minority Christians and have told the Christians to give them their wives,
sisters and daughters for sex if they failed to pay the tax. (Source: Christian
Solidarity Worldwide, Dec. 13, 2001).
The Muslim thugs gang-raped mother and daughter together on
the same bed with the parents and children forced to watch; and they have raped
mothers in front of their children (The Daily Janakantha, Feb. 5, 2002; April
22, 2002).
On February 8, 1989, about 400 Muslims from the neighboring
villages attacked the Hindu community of the village of Sobahan,
in Daudkandi, Comilla. The Muslims
reminded them that, “the government has declared Islam to be the state
religion, and therefore you have to either convert to Islam or leave the
country.” They set ablaze every Hindu household after looting, razed the
temples, and then gang-raped women. (Source: ‘Baishammer Shikar Bangladesher
Hindu Sampradaya (The Hindus of Bangladesh: Victim of Discrimination), Matiur
Rahman & Azizul Huq eds., 1990, cited Dutta, 2005).
Often the commanding officer of police stations personally
conducts violence against minorities. As example, Tofazzal Hossain,
Officer-in-Charge, "led a procession at the dead of night that ransacked
two Ashrams (place of religious retreat for Hindus), a temple of Goddess Kali,
and three houses at Gopalpur when seven to eight people were injured in mass
beating." (The Daily Star, June 3,
2003).
On August 28, 2004, the Paramilitary forces, together with
local extremists, burned down 400 dwelling houses in Mahalchari, Chittagong
Hill Tracts, after looting the villages, gang raping their women and destroying
Buddhist temples. These indigenous Buddhist people represented 97% of the
population in 1947, by 2001 they accounted for less than 50% (US Department of
State’s Country Report on Human Rights Practices, 2004).
The police rarely allow rape victims of minority groups to
press charges against their rapists. Typically, if a rape victim goes to the
police and insist on action, they are given the “run around” for a few days so
the rape evidence disappears. The police officers themselves will then
persecute the victims. The victims frequently face death-threats or kidnapping if
they try to file charges (The Daily Janakantha, Feb. 16, 2002).
Eleven members of same family roasted alive (which includes
a child of four day) in village Southern Shadhanpur
on 19 November 2003 (Bando, 2004, p. 13)
Several thousand Hindu temples have already been
systematically destroyed (352 in 1992 alone). Delwar Hossain Sayedee, the
Jamaat-e-Islami leader decreed that all statues except those of Muslim
worshipers should be destroyed (Baldwin,
2002). The Sanskrit and Hindu religious University (Saraswata Samaj) in Dhaka,
in operation before independence of Bangladesh in 1971, was closed
after the independence. It’s land and assets was confiscated by the government
of Bangladesh in a bid to
wipe out Hindu educational system, whereas millions of dollars are spent for
the development of Madrassas (Roy,
2008).
The Bangladesh
government can seize the land of these ‘legally identified enemies’ at any time
lawfully and force them to emigrate. In Bangladesh, it is legal to capture
the land of a Hindu and to give it to Muslims. It is Vested Property Act (VPA),
which is same as was Enemy Property Act (EPA) in Pakistan. In 1965, when
Indo-Pakistani War ended in a shameful defeat for Pakistan;
in an undisguised act of revenge, Pakistan passed the EPA, which was
deliberately aimed at its Hindu population. This act empowered the government
to declare their land and possessions as enemy property and confiscate it.
After independence, the new nation, Bangladesh, rewrote the EPA as the
Vested Property Act, explicitly stating that only the law’s title had changed,
not its content. This had caused much horror to the Hindus and other religious
minorities, who were now ‘outsiders’, nay enemy of state, in their own country.
At the time of Bangladesh
independence, nearly one in five citizens was a Hindu; today the proportion is
less than one in ten. The Vested Property Act and fear of communal violence are
the two main reasons behind the emigration of Hindus to India (Ain O
Salish Kendra, 1999, p. 192)
How inhuman the Vested Property Act (VPA) is and how
insulting would such a law be?
Just imagine for a moment that the U.S. or the
Canadian law empowers the government to seize the land and property of
non-Christians and give it to Christians, or Indian Government or Israeli
Government is empowered to seize the lands of Muslims and give it to the Hindus
or to the Jews, respectively. It’s not difficult to imagine the kind of
international outcry would, quite justifiably, be heard from every human right
groups, NGOs, media, and governments around the world. Every right-minded
citizen will raise an outcry.
Fortunately, no such inhuman law exists in the civilized
world sparing us of deafening protests from those advocacy groups. But
distressfully, both Pakistan
and Bangladesh
have such a barbaric law on the books for several decades. The only difference
between their law and the hypothetical one above is that they are
Muslim-majority countries and the laws address property of non-Muslims.
The seized lands under VPA have benefited every major
political party in Bangladesh.
Between 2001 and 2006, 45% of the spoils went to the center-right BNP, 31% to
the center-left Awami League (the figures were reversed when the Awami League
was in power), 15% to Islamist parties, and the rest to Jatiya and others
(Benkin, nd). Till 1998, more than 2 million acres of land have been taken over
from Hindus under VPA (Barkat & Jaman, 1998).
As per another newspaper report, the Adivashi (aboriginal)
community already had lost about 80% of their land to the local hooligans,
supported by strong political backing, as they are poor and ignorant of their
rights. They have hardly any knowledge about the legal provisions and documents
related to land property. Therefore, they easily fall prey to opportunists
(Bhoumic & Dhar, 1999). The survival of the Garo tribes of Mymensingh is
already under threat, because the government had taken their natural forest for
rubber plantation. As per another report (Barkat & Shafiquzzaman, 1996, p.
7), from 1964 onwards, on an average basis 538 Hindus have 'vanished' each day
because of this act. The same report calculated that the vanishing-rate has not
been uniform over periods: in 1964-71, it averaged 703 per day; between 1971
and 1981, it was 537; and in 1981-91, the figure stood at 439 (Trivedi, 2007).
Another report estimates that more than 500 Hindus crossing over the border
every day (Chowdhury, 1998, p. 214). Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University
undertook the most authoritative study of the VPA and concluded that by 1997,
40 percent of Hindu families in Bangladesh
had been affected by it and more than half of all Hindu-owned land already had
been confiscated under the act (Benkin, 2008).
Here’s another common method of land grabbing. Bangladeshi
Muslims are mostly landless agricultural laborers, whereas many Hindus are rich
farmers, owning a large tract of agricultural lands, tilled by Muslim peasants.
At a time, when the Hindus suffer from extreme insecurity, some Muslims would
appear as their protectors in exchange of land, to be sold to them for a
pittance. After some time, they would disappear, and their place will be taken
by another bunch of similar protectors, who would ask for some more land. This
way, eventually the Hindu will loose all his land and leave the country to
become as refugee in India.
The idea is to take over as much of his land with proper documentation for as
little money as possible (Roy, 2007, p. 165).
Though during 2001, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh had
directed the government to return the land, confiscated under this Act, to real
owners, but no Hindus got their land back. There are two reasons behind this.
Firstly, the Ruling Party has no intention to abolish such a
law. The VPA is still in force and actively being used right at this time. In
2001, at the conclusion of its term in office, the Awami League passed the
Vested Property Return Act. Everyone considers that this was an empty gesture,
which the AL
government knew would never be implemented. They had five years to do
something, but did not act. It was a cynical action, and in fact the Awami
League received as much spoils from the VPA as did its rival, the Bangladesh
Nationalist Party. Therefore, no land has been returned. (Benkin, 2009).
Secondly, corruption has touched almost every level of the
legal system and there is widespread abuse of legal process. Such malpractices,
contrary to judicial independence, are undermining public confidence in the
administration of justice. The clerks and peons often under bribe misplace
records, remove documents and sometimes even destroy them. Even the Judges in Bangladesh as a
normal (mal) practice receive bribe or other undue advantages (Talukder, 1994,
p. 101). Police is also identified as the most corrupt category in the country.
In fact, Berlin-based Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index
2001 and 2002 each identified Bangladesh
as the most corrupt country in the world. In this scenario, it is not difficult
to imagine, not many Hindus will be benefited by the Law in spite of Court
decision.
How silly, a Bangladeshi official even justified the VPA as
a form of “protection” for the Hindu minority! Again how silly it is when, Kazi
Azizul Huq of the Khalefat Andolin Bangladesh said that many of the
Hindus have left “voluntarily” even abandoning or selling their lands (Benkin,
nd). Did the World forget that countless German Jews “voluntarily” transferred
their properties in the 1930s?
What a terrible irony! In 1971, the new Bangladesh was greatly indebted to India, without whose support it never could achieve independence.
International human rights organizations are yet to
acknowledge the full extent of the ethnic-cleansing in Bangladesh,
because the facts often go unreported. Often Human Rights Investigators are
detained. Media is often censored and / or purchased. Honest journalists are
often murdered. Hence, the World is blissfully ignorant and their inaction
encourages the perpetrators to continue doing it with impunity. But in spite of
this, Amnesty International has procured significant factual data and the State
Department-supported U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has
gathered limited documentation. Foreign diplomats in Bangladesh have set up a
“Fact-Finding Commission” to investigate such atrocities and repression.
Very recently, Bangladeshi newspapers have started featuring stories on minority oppressions. To suppress facts of minority oppressions, Islamic fundamentalists have killed many Journalists and prominent members of minority community as well as liberal Muslims, while many have been jailed.
Bertil Lintner, a Hong-Kong based senior journalist for the
Far Eastern Economic Review and a contributing writer for The Wall Street
Journal, with much frustration, described how authorities initially declined to
grant him a visa to visit Bangladesh
after his first reports created a furor. He also received threats over email
that said he would suffer the same fate as journalist Daniel Pearl
[kidnapped & killed by militants in Pakistan]
if he ventured to visit Bangladesh
again. Linter lamented that rising Islamic fundamentalism and religious
intolerance are posing trouble for the regions and beyond (Guha Mozumder,
2003).
William Sloan, president of the Canadian branch of the
American Association of Jurors, visited Bangladesh and described his horror
on seeing Hindu victims of torture. One man's fingers had been cut off,
another's hand was amputated, still more were blinded and others had iron rods
nailed through their legs or abdomen. He also recalled the desperate stories of
women and children who had been gang-raped, often in front of their fathers or
husbands (Baldwin, 2002)
Taslima Nasrin, appalled by what she witnessed, described
the horrifying experience of one Hindu family in her 1993 novel, Shame. Muslim
clerics threatened her life with fatwa. Fearing for her life, she fled to Europe, where she still lives.
Abdul Ghaffar Chowdhury, a columnist and liberal activist
from London
lamented that "After seeing what is happening to the minorities, I am
ashamed to say I am a Muslim," (Guha Mozumder, 2003)
It is shocking that the Hindus in India,
who share the same ancestral root, culture and religion, are completely
apathetic to their coreligionists in Bangladesh. It is utter disgrace
and real shame to Indians (particularly those old, fossilized and spineless
Indian politicians) that they silently watch the cleansing of Hindus from
Islamic Bangladesh. When Indians remain silent about the sufferings of their
coreligionists, what can be expected from the international community? It’s not
time for Indians to maintain a hands-off policy. How we can ignore the
continuous influx of Hindu refugees on Indian soil? The basic cause is that the
spineless Indian politicians typically lack the courage to ignore Muslim
vote-bank politics in India
and publicly address this problem.
The Hindu refugees should be given strong legal protection
in India.
This will assure them their human rights, education for their children, freedom
of movement, and better employment opportunities. Many of them are
well-educated and have potential for creative contribution to the society.
Often they were wealthy people in Bangladesh but now reduced to
wandering day-laborers or rickshaw-pullers; or in worst situation, to digging
through garbage dumps for food with their skins sticking like paper to their
skeletons and the bones protruding. They fit every classic definition of a
refugee community. The Muslim nation of Bangladesh
gave them nothing except pain and suffering but they have something to expect
from the civilized nation, India,
world’s second-largest democracy. The great nation of India,
throughout her recorded history, never refused protection to anyone; then why
this apathy? If given chances, they will prosper.
Like a cruel joke of Allah, many Muslims are also taking
shelter in India
in guise of Hindu refugees for better living standard and for promoting Islamic
terrorism. They need to be positively identified and pushed back to Bangladesh.
Indian Government should also put pressure to repeal the
racist Vested Property Act in Bangladesh.
This callous law offends every principle of human dignity. With this Act in
force, ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh
remains legal. Also, the refugees need to get suitable compensation for their
loss of property under this act. Until the Indian government, who has to open
borders to the victims of the horrendous Act, takes any action, the
international community is not going to anything. The time for empty speeches,
lame excuses and official meetings that lead nowhere is over. Bangladesh must
be made not only to act, but to act fast. We need to focus on the results
rather than efforts. To achieve this, the Indian politicians must put aside
their individual egos and recognize that our goal and the welfare of the
Bangladeshi Hindus are far more important than any of us as individuals. If we
can accomplish something for the people, it is not at all important who gets
the credit for it or the praise. But regretfully, too many of Indian
politicians still put themselves or their organizations above a noble cause, which
is, of course, a betrayal to the cause itself. The Indian politicians must
organize an umbrella organization that coordinates action to stop ethnic
cleansing in neighboring countries. No person or group needs to give up their
independence, but if we are to succeed in helping these people, we must be
organized and united. It is not just Hindus but also Sikhs, Christians and
others in India who, if they
believe in equality, should insist in public that India's neighbors show respect for
the human rights of minorities.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the civilized world
should demand an end to this human tragedy. Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, and others often have urged for setting up international monitors of
human rights violation in various parts of the world, but they have been silent
on this matter. The United Nations, NATO, and other international
organizations, likewise, can be found in all sorts of international trouble
spots. But they, too, have been silent on this issue.
Through this article, all right-thinking common citizens of every country, the honest and upright journalists, prominent political leaders, global opinion makers, human rights groups, and people seated in positions of authority, European Union and the United Nations are appealed to pay their kind attention to the sufferings of minorities in Bangladesh at the earliest. The oppressors must be handed due justice for the ethnic-cleansing, murder and violation of human rights of people from minority communities in Bangladesh. Humankind has witnessed numberless incidents of ethnic cleansing in history. Open the 1400 years of recorded history of Islam: blood dips from every page of it. Whatever is happening in Muslim Bangladesh is nothing new. In modern times, the civilized world, quite sadly, has been consistent in combating them in timely manner. Generally nothing is done until dead-bodies are piled up too high to be obscure. If left unchecked, the Bangladeshi Muslims will very soon add another glorious chapter to the Islamic history by completely cleansing the minorities from its soil. Would they succeed? Let’s wait and see