205 Incidents of Attacks on Minorities In Five Days, Says Minority Collective in Bangladesh

A prominent organisation in Bangladesh representing various religious minorities today held a press conference and told the media that they had collected data on 205 incidents of attack on minorities in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Oikya Parishad said the attacks had taken place across 52 districts since 5 August, when Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country, reported The Daily Star.

The organisation’s president, Nirmal Rosario told the media that they “had primarily learned that at least 205 incidents of minority persecution have occurred in 52 districts so far”.

Rosario said the lives of minorities “are in a disastrous state” as they are staying up at night to guard homes and temples.

The organisation has written an open letter to Nobel laureate Economist Muhammad Yunus, who was sworn in as the chief advisor to the interim government on Thursday.

The letter, signed by other minority organisations such as Oikya Parishad and Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Parishad, also took objection to the exclusion of religious texts other than the Quran during the swearing-in ceremony.

"The exclusion of readings from other religious texts contradicts our constitution, the spirit of the Liberation War, and anti-discrimination values,” an activist, Kajal Devnath, said, adding that he, too, was forced to stay at a friend’s house seeking refuge.

Readers may know that the Indian government has formed a high-level committee to monitor the situation along the Indo-Bangladesh border amid reports of hundreds of Bangladeshis, primarily Hindus, trying to enter India in desperation after 5 August.

Notably, Hindus form the second-largest religious group in Bangladesh but are only eight per cent of its estimated 17 crore population.

The figure in 1951 was 22 per cent. As per a study, continuous out-migration of Hindus could lead to their total eradication from Bangladesh by 2050.

Hindus are largely seen as supporters of Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League, considered a secularist party rivalled by right-of-centre and radically Islamist ones.

While part of the reason for the ongoing attacks is this political support, Hindus faced attacks even during Hasina’s 15 years of rule as Bangladesh has become increasingly more Islamised over the decades.

A Bangladeshi human rights group, Ain o Salish Kendra, collected data on attacks on Hindus and their property between January 2013 and December 2021, reporting 3,679 attacks including vandalism, arson and targeted violence.