Hindus in Bangladesh Facing Genocide?

Uzay Bulut

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• The protests that started against the former Bangladeshi government have since descended into rampant violence against the Hindu community.
• ” Jamaat-e-Islami has made a list of Hindu houses and businesses, and they are systematically targeting Hindus. I am also being told that JeI has blocked several roads with mobs walking around with guns. The network is also intermittently down and they are hardly able to contact each other. Essentially, the Hindus are boxed in a situation where they are not being allowed to communicate with each other and form groups to help each other. The situation, according to them is extremely dire. There is also news of at least 3 Hindu girls being abducted by the Muslims. There are probably far more…” — Nupur J Sharma, a journalist in Delhi, X, August 7, 2024.
• “That Bangladesh has violently toppled a democratically elected government and is going in the direction of Afghanistan is not news anymore…. The victims have no one to turn to, as global organizations such as the United Nations sold their souls to their Islamic masters long ago…. Bangladesh has descended into a true Islamic abyss. There are mutilated, naked, dead bodies suspended from giant structures in full public view. Islamic apologists in India have done everything in their power to whitewash the Islamic onslaught on Hindus in Bangladesh…. Leftists dub the anarchy in Bangladesh as a victory of democracy….” — Ashlyn Davis, political analyst, jihadwatch.org, August 6, 2024.
• Ironically, the land that is now called Bangladesh was majority-Hindu before its Islamization, which occurred after Islamic armies invaded and conquered the Indian subcontinent beginning in the eighth century. So was Pakistan.
• “[T]here has been a long history of violence and repression against Hindus in Bangladesh including genocide of an estimated two million then East Pakistani citizens (mostly Hindu), the ethnic cleansing of 10 million ethnic Bengalis (mostly Hindus) who fled to India, and the rape of 200,000 women (also mostly Hindu) in camps set up for the sole purpose of raping and terrorizing.” — The Hindu American Foundation.
• Terrifying videos of riots, lynchings, and arsonists setting fire to houses and offices are being shared on social media platforms. Will the United Nations or anyone intervene and stop the atrocities? Or will the world once again see and ignore yet more crimes against humanity with no accountability for those Islamists who perpetrate them?

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Hindus protest against violent Islamist attacks on their community, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on August 9, 2024, (Photo by Luis Tato/AFP via Getty Images)

Hindus in Bangladesh are under attack. Islamists who have sabotaged the students’ anti-government protests have been rioting and hunting down defenseless Hindus across the country since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign and flee to India on August 5.

According to reports and social media posts from the region, Hindu homes have been burned, shops looted, and temples vandalized. Muslim mobs are wreaking havoc on the Hindu minority. Countless Hindus have been victimized by the rampaging Islamists.

A list of 54 attacks that targeted temples, homes and establishments that belong to the Hindu community in the country was released by the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, also on August 5. According to the X account of Voice of Bangladeshi Hindus, these attacks happened within five hours.

Hundreds of people were killed in a crackdown on demonstrations that began as protests against job quotas and swelled into a movement demanding Hasina’s ouster. The Bangladesh military is reportedly forming an interim government.

The protests that started against the former Bangladeshi government have since descended into rampant violence against the Hindu community.

Monindra Kumar Nath, senior joint general secretary of the Oikya Parishad, told the newspaper Daily Star:

“There are no areas or districts left where communal attacks have not taken place. We’re continuously getting reports from different parts of the country about attacks on houses and business establishments …

“They’re crying, saying they are being beaten up, and their houses and businesses are being looted. What is our fault? Is it our fault that we are citizens of the country?”

Adding the Hindus in the country are fearing more attacks, Monindra asked, ‘Where would we go if such attacks continue here? How can we console the members of the Hindu community?'”

Islamists “vandalized and set ablaze” the houses of the Hindus in Raujan Upazila of Chattragram district. They attacked and burned down a Hindu village, Jayganj. Many shops belonging to Hindus have also been reduced to ashes

A video depicting Islamists breaking new benchmarks for savagery and hatred towards Hindus has gone viral. An Indian news outlet reported:

“In the video, Islamists can be seen encircling a dead victim lying on the ground. There’s a pool of blood beneath the deceased man’s broken head, and his hands are bound in handcuffs. Many men are gathered around him. With the aid of a stick, one man, whose face cannot be seen in the video, strips the deceased person naked and checks the victim’s private part for circumcision. Shouting ‘Hindu, Hindu’ over the corpse, the crowd hovering over the dead body laughs, realizing that the man is a Hindu because he is not circumcised.”

More violent incidents can be seen on X handles such as Hindu Voice, Voice of Bangladeshi Hindus, and others.

Nupur J Sharma, a journalist based in Delhi, posted on X:

“I just spoke to Bangladeshi Hindus. Jamaat-e-Islami has made a list of Hindu houses and businesses, and they are systematically targeting Hindus. I am also being told that JeI has blocked several roads with mobs walking around with guns. The network is also intermittently down and they are hardly able to contact each other. Essentially, the Hindus are boxed in a situation where they are not being allowed to communicate with each other and form groups to help each other. The situation, according to them is extremely dire. There is also news of at least 3 Hindu girls being abducted by the Muslims. There are probably far more, however, the Hindus are not even being able to collate a list of the atrocities being committed because their movement is severely restricted, due to the mobs on the streets patrolling Hindus.

“The situation is likely to get much worse for Hindus in Bangladesh”

Political analyst Ashlyn Davis writes:

“That Bangladesh has violently toppled a democratically elected government and is going in the direction of Afghanistan is not news anymore. What started in a facade of a “student movement” has culminated in countrywide mayhem, arson, bloodbaths, and more. But that is not a shock, either. Anyone aware of the current power dynamics in the South Asian Islamic countries has seen this coming…

“The religious minority in Bangladesh is going through unimaginable suffering, and this could continue until the fanatical Muslim mob has finished off the last non-Muslim in Bangladesh. The victims have no one to turn to, as global organizations such as the United Nations sold their souls to their Islamic masters long ago.

“Bangladesh has descended into a true Islamic abyss. There are mutilated, naked, dead bodies suspended from giant structures in full public view. Islamic apologists in India have done everything in their power to whitewash the Islamic onslaught on Hindus in Bangladesh. Indian Muslims are eyeing a similar insurgency in India; they are not even discreet about it anymore. Leftists dub the anarchy in Bangladesh as a victory of democracy, a triumph of the students’ movement, and a revolution of sorts. What students march into a former prime minister’s residence and loot furniture, clothes, eatables, home appliances, plants, animals, and birds? What student loots the underwear of an older woman from her house and flashes it to his fellow students as a sign of victory? A jihadi does.”

Islamists in Bangladesh have a long history of massacring Hindus and other non-Muslim minorities in Bangladesh. Hindus have suffered from the violence of Islamist groups, such as Jamaat-e-Islami, as well as political parties and wider Muslim society, since the country’s founding in 1971.

The Pakistani army and its Islamist allies committed a 10-month campaign of genocide in 1971 against the Bengali and Hindu communities in Bangladesh, then East Pakistan.

Approximately 3 million people were killed and at least 200,000 women raped. Most of the victims were Hindus. The genocide ended when the Indian army intervened and defeated the Pakistani army. The war also led to the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan.

Jamaat-e-Islami participated in the 1971 genocide on the side of Pakistan. In 2016, Motiur Rahman Nizami, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged after a Bangladeshi special tribunal sentenced him to death for genocide, rape and orchestrating the massacre of intellectuals during the genocide. Jamaat-e-Islami is now attacking Hindus in Bangladesh.

Hindus in the country have for decades been subject to summary executions, mob violence, rapes, desecrations of their temples, and other human rights abuses by Islamists.

Hence, since the partition of India in 1947, the Hindu population in Bangladesh (former East Pakistan) has drastically declined from 31% to 10% (less than 9% according to some estimates) today.

Hasina, who was forced out of her country, was friendly to Hindus, and tried to promote a peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Hindus — a concept foreign to radical Islam. Now that she is gone from the country and the Islamist opposition is emboldened, Hindus are in even greater danger.

Ironically, the land that is now called Bangladesh was majority-Hindu before its Islamization, which occurred after Islamic armies invaded and conquered the Indian subcontinent beginning in the eighth century. So was Pakistan. Afghanistan also used to have a sizable Hindu population before Islamization.

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) notes:

“From rampant institutionalized and social discrimination, and widespread restrictions on religious freedom to bonded labor, kidnappings, forced conversions, rape, rampant violence, land grabs, and destruction of religious sites, religious minorities and ethnic minorities live as second-class citizens in these neighboring countries [Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan] with no improvement of conditions in sight. For those who were able to flee, India has been their only hope for freedom and survival…

“A bitter fact in today’s Bangladesh is that the Hindu population is dying out…

“In light of systematic human rights violations and discrimination that has incrementally worsened, the Hindu population has been rapidly leaving Bangladesh at an alarming rate and more than that of any other time.

“Discrimination towards the Hindu community in Bangladesh is both visible and hidden. The state’s bias in the Constitution and its reluctance to address human rights violations against minorities makes this discrimination evident. Moreover, there has been a long history of violence and repression against Hindus in Bangladesh including genocide of an estimated two million then East Pakistani citizens (mostly Hindu), the ethnic cleansing of 10 million ethnic Bengalis (mostly Hindus) who fled to India, and the rape of 200,000 women (also mostly Hindu) in camps set up for the sole purpose of raping and terrorizing. This infamous history consists of many barbaric episodes of violence over the years, including attacks on Bangladeshi Hindus in retaliation for the tearing down of the Babri Mosque in India in the 1990s, the 2001 post-election violence, and the vast appropriation of land under the Vested Property Act.”

The indigenous Hindu population in Pakistan has also collapsed because of decades-long persecution.

At the time of the partition of India in 1947, the Hindu population in Pakistan (the area formerly comprising West Pakistan) was approximately 26%, but millions of Hindus and Sikhs fled violence and riots for the safety of India. Today, Hindus are less than 2%.

As Hindus in Bangladesh are under relentless, unprovoked attacks at the hands of Islamists, defenseless Hindus are facing a serious threat of genocide, as in 1971. Terrifying videos of riots, lynchings, and arsonists setting fire to houses and offices are being shared on social media platforms. Will the United Nations or anyone intervene and stop the atrocities? Or will the world once again see and ignore yet more crimes against humanity with no accountability for those Islamists who perpetrate them?

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Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

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