COVERT GENOCIDE OF HINDUS IN BANGLADESH

[Guest guest]

A delegation comprising of Jiten Roy, Ph.D., President, and Bidyut

Sarkar,

General Secretary, respectively, of International Federation of

Bangladeshi

Hindus & Friends, Dr. Narinder Kukar, former National President of

the

Association of Indians in America and N. Kataria, Founder of Indian

American

Intellectuals Forum, called on Deputy Ambassador, Indian Mission, Mr.

A.

Gopinathan, at New York on January 20, and presented to him a

memorandum

documenting the pitiable plight of Hindus who are being subjected to

relentless torture, ghastly murder, gang rape and forcible conversion

to

Islam. The memorandum urged the Indian Mission at U.N. to take up

this

matter seriously with the Government of India and find a permanent

solution

to the state sponsored campaign aimed at ethnic-cleansing of Hindus

in

Bangladesh.

 

The memorandum, inter alia, stated that Bangladesh, where 11,000 of

its 64,

000 madrassas are constantly producing jihadis, "has become a safe

haven for

Islamic terrorists - - including Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters fresh

off the

boat from Afghanistan." (The Time Asia Magazine Oct. 16, '02; Far

Eastern

Economic Review (April 4,2002); The Wall Street Journal April 2'02);

Office

of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism/US Department of State, May

21, 2002;

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2001: Bangladesh, March

2002)

Time Asia Magazine, CNNews (Dec. 21, '01) New York Times (Nov.

27, '01) etc.

In the past one and half years, ever since the ruling coalition

of "Islamic

hardliners" (The Guardian, Oct. 2, '01) assumed power with an

absolute

majority, the Islamic extremists have gained enormous strength

demonstrating

that they are capable of enacting several Balies, if not 9/11s.

 

Earlier, using the Babri Mosque incident as a ploy to teach Hindus a

befitting lesson, Jehadis had killed 15 Hindus, raped 2600 Hindu

women, razed

3,600 temples and rendered 200,000 Hindus homeless.

 

Militant Islamists have looted, razed and in many cases set ablaze

dwelling

houses, businesses, temples, imposed infidel protection tax,

gang/mass raped

[e.g. nearly 200 Hindu women were mass raped by the Muslims in Char

Fashion

in a single night (The Daily Star, Nov 16, 2001); mother and eight-

year-old

daughter were gang-raped together subjecting the helpless

father/husband to

watch such ghastly scene], brutally tortured, murdered, and left with

the

ultimatum:" Go to India, where you rightly belong." Incidents of

rape remain

generally underreported because of the stigma attached to it, yet

among the

228 rape cases reported within the day of election 225 or 98.68 % of

the rape

victims were Hindus and the perpetrators belonged to the ruling

parties (see,

e.g., The Daily Janakantha, Feb. 17, '02). When the victims of rape

approach

the police station to press charges against the gang of rapists, the

commanding officers not only refuse to accept their cases but in some

cases

also persecute the victim by detaining them in the precinct lockup

(see,

e.g., The Daily Janakantha, Feb. 17, '2).

 

As a result of the above-mentioned systematic persecution, Hindu

population

in Bangladesh has decreased from 35% in 1947 to 10% in 2003

 

Hence, the Hindus of Bangladesh have no other alternative but to

demand a

permanent solution of this problem, by creating a protected region.

If the

Bosnian Muslims. East Timorese Christians, Srilankan Tamils, Iraqi

Kurds

deserve international attention, the Bangladeshi Hindus, 25 million

of whose

people have been driven out of the country and 2.5 million acres of

whose

land confiscated, deserve help find a permanent solution to their

problem, too. Such a solution can never be achieved unless India

intervenes, like it did in 1971

 

By:

Narain Kataria

41-67 Judge Street

(5P)

Elmhurst, New York 11373

(718) 478-5735