DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh's largest minority rights group accused the country's interim government on Thursday of failing to protect religious and ethnic minorities from attacks and harassment, a claim the government has denied.
Bangladesh minority rights group accuses interim government of failing to protect minorities
Bangladesh's largest minority rights group accused the country's interim government on Thursday of failing to protect religious and ethnic minorities from attacks and harassment, a claim the government has denied.
By JULHAS ALAM
January 30, 2025 at 12:03PM
The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council said the government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus is also using state institutions to suppress minority groups. Yunus took over after a student-led uprising last year in which hundreds of people died forced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to India on Aug. 5, ending her 15-year rule.
The council earlier said 2,010 incidents of communal violence took place across the Muslim-majority country between Aug. 4 and 20. The Yunus-led government disputed the claim, saying that most of the incidents were caused by ''political reasons'' and not by communal issues.
Traditionally, Hindus and other members of minority groups have been seen as supporters of Hasina's Bangladesh Awami League party.
In a news conference on Thursday, the council reiterated its claim of earlier attacks and said 174 new incidents of communal violence had taken place between Aug. 21 and Dec. 31 last year in which 23 members of minority groups were killed and nine women were raped. It said other incidents involved arson, vandalism, looting and forcible takeover of property and businesses. It said at least 15 members of minority groups were either arrested or tortured for allegedly undermining Islam.
Manindra Kumar Nath, the group's acting general secretary, accused the government of manipulating state institutions to harass people from minority groups.
''We have observed that the interim government has begun using various important state institutions to carry out discriminatory actions against minorities. This is unexpected and undesirable from a government that was established based on the anti-discrimination student movement,'' he said.
The council said minority groups were being targeted in a systematic way, and called for the release of a jailed Hindu leader.
Nath said the leader, Chinmoy Das Prabhu, was being deprived of his legal right to bail in a sedition case. He is also known as Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari.
Nath said many minority leaders had gone into hiding because of false charges against them. The interim government has said they face specific charges and were not targeted for any communal reason.
Under Yunus, Bangladesh has been going through a tense period with Hindu-majority India over minority issues, sparking protests and counter-protests. Less than 8% of Bangladesh's 170 million people are Hindu. Many in the interim government are unhappy that India is sheltering Hasina, and a special tribunal in Bangladesh has sought her arrest. An official request to India for her extradition remains unanswered.
India, which sheltered 10 million refugees and helped Bangladesh gain independence after a nine-month war against Pakistan in 1971, considers Hasina to be a trusted friend. Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the independence leader of Bangladesh, then the eastern part of Pakistan, India's regional foe.
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