Ethnic Cleansing
& Rise of Islamic Militancy in Bangladesh
Bertil
Lintner
IMAGINE
how it would be like when 25 million people vanish from a projected
population of 39 million. Imagine how it would be like when two
and a half million acres of prime land is grabbed from a country
smaller in size than the State of Wisconsin.
Imagine
how it would be like when one is subjected to rape, unending torture,
forced conversion, discrimination in education and employment,
intimidation to practice one's own religious faith, loot, arson
and other savageries of worst kind.
This
is the story of the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and the ethnic
minorities of Bangladesh -- a story of slow genocide, a story
of violence and betrayal by their own government, a testament
of hard-line Islamic politicking designed to minority cleansing,
a continuing saga that has played out since 1947 to the present
day Bangladesh.
Bangladesh
has been a fertile ground for bigoted Islamic idealism for a long
time. Especially, since 1975 with the assassination of the country's
founding father and altering of the constitution, the Islamic
Radicalism has been thrust into the political landscape of the
country. With enormous financial help from branded terrorists,
outlawed regimes, and proponents of Wahabism such as Saudi Arabia,
Libya, Iraq, Iran and other renegade terrorist networks.
Bangladesh
has built hundreds of thousands of Mosques and madrassahs that
constantly foment violence against non-Muslims and country's progressive
groups and cultural institutions. There are 64,000 madrassahs
or so called religious schools where the unsuspecting Muslim youths
are recruited and trained to be the foot soldiers for a Taliban
style Bangladesh. They espouse hate and bigotry against anyone
that does not conform to their brand of militant Islam. The infamous
American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, was a graduate from one such
Madrassah in Pakistan.
Persecution
of minorities in Bangladesh has been a lingering issue for past
sixty years with some intermittent reprieves that came along with
the changing hands of power. But the aura of minority cleansing
never fully subsided. October 2001, when the coalition of Islamic
hard-liners swept into power trumpeting their goal to make Bangladesh
a pure Islamic Country as their election themes-- brought a new
momentum to their hostility towards minorities. They marked their
victory with unprecedented and unprovoked attacks on innocent
men, women and children belonging to the minority communities.
The
government not only shamelessly failed to provide the country's
15 million ethno-religious minorities any protection against these
attacks, but also showed its utter indifference to human life
by cowardly aiding in the history's worst savagery. Since then,
hundreds of thousands of young girls and women have been abducted
and raped, tens of thousands of minority owned homes and businesses
have been looted and razed, hundreds of places of worship have
been burnt down all across Bangladesh. Women as old as seventy
and girls as young seven have not even been spared of their brunt
of rape and terror. Abduction of young girls from homes at gunpoint,
gang rape, and forced conversions to Islam have been endemic in
Bangladesh.
Prime
Minister Khaleda Zia is responsible for this latest cycle of crimes
against humanity.
She has personally orchestrated each and every recent dreadful
terror against the minorities with a clear and unambiguous purpose
of cleansing the country's minorities to transform it into a Pure
Muslim Country. She has used every resource of the government
at her disposal to intimidate, terrorize and torture people into
either leaving the country or submitting to convert to Islamic
extremism. Today, forced conversion to Islam has become a corrosive
fodder to the fundamentalists, courtesy of Begum Khaleda Zia.
It
may recall the massacre that took place back in April 1992. The
then Prime Minister of the country, Begum Khaleda Zia used her
army to systematically murder 600 tribal residents of Logang in
Chittagong Hill Tracts, and burned the entire village to the ground.
Seven months later, she orchestrated another wave of minority
persecution in which 15 minorities were killed, 2,600 women raped,
10,000 injured, 40,000 dwelling houses destroyed, 3, 600 temples
damaged/razed and 200,000 rendered homeless. Begum Zia, like her
Islamic fundamentalist predecessors has been a mortal danger to
pluralistic democracy and the rule of law.
Recently,
while she has deployed armies on the streets to curtail the rights
of citizens, to take prisoner of political rivals and human rights
activists, to stifle the voices of progressive thinkers and journalists
on vital national issues such as human rights, freedom of religion.
she has allowed Bangladesh to become a cocoon of terror, a hub
for international terrorism.It is an established fact that Bangladesh
now harbors and supports international terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda
and Harkat-ul-Jihad. Fighters trained and given new identities
in Bangladesh routinely find their ways to conflicts throughout
the world and are wrecking havoc everywhere.
These
are worrisome developments for Bangladesh, the world and for the
entire humanity.
With
the government's active encouragement the fundamentalists have
often revealed their ugly fangs by perpetrating terrors on Bangladesh's
most vulnerable citizens, the minorities. We believe the initiative
to correct the great miscarriage of justice, to right the decades
of wrongs committed by the Islamic Zealots must come, first and
foremost, from the citizens of Bangladesh who believe in peace,
freedom and justice by forming a united resistance against militant
Islam in the country.
In
the same vein I remind the International Community that Bangladesh
has willfully violated all International Laws and Conventions
that specifically address the Human Rights and Freedom of Religion
Issues. Today, throughout the world terror has cast its ugly spells
on life and liberty- the very things the civilized world pride
itself upon. And persecution of minorities in Bangladesh is certainly
an inseparable phenomenon of global terror because the terrorist
networks responsible for this are also global.
They
are linked together with a common purpose to exterminate anyone
not subscribing to their brand of religion. History has taught
us, time and again, that cowering into inaction when terror manifest
itself is at civilization's own great peril. It challenge the
civilized nations to heed the history's call to actions against
the plague of Islamic Jihad.
All
along it has demanded retribution and justice for all sufferings,
to repatriate and compensate victims of forced exodus. In 2001,
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, promised the nation to investigate
the carnage and to rehabilitate the victims. Two years elapsed
since she has predictably failed to deliver on her promise, for
she is a player in that "axis of terror". It has demanded
the government to restore the original constitution of Bangladesh
by repealing the 5th (Introducing Islam to the Constitution) and
8th (Declaring Islam as the State Religion) Amendments the two
very divisive issues that took away 'Equal Rights' and destroyed
the moral fabric of the nation.
Prime
Minister Khaleda Zia has shown no indication of changing course,
let alone acting on this. Rather she has partnered with the Islamic
hard-liners and the proponents of these discriminatory laws and
publicly professed her desire to make Bangladesh a pure Islamic
Country. Her newfound majority in the parliament is only an added
incentive for her and her partners in Islamic Jihad to make their
bigoted dream come true. It has also demanded the repeal of "Enemy
Property Act" or "Vested Property Law" of 1965
from the constitution, under which the country's minorities have
been dispossessed of more than 2.5 million acres of prime land.
Legislation was passed in the parliament by the Awami-League Government,
providing a ray of hope, to end this dreaded episode of grabbing
of our lands. But the new government of Khaleda Zia, scuttled
the entire legislation through various administrative maneuvers
even before the law took effect. She failed this time too. Trusting
her again would further jeopardize the minorities of Bangladesh.
It
is time to place BD minority demand to the world community. It
is no longer can accept this continuing saga of being treated
as aliens, hounded and hunted by Islamic radicals, in our own
land. It has endured enough pain and sufferings, sustained huge
loss of lives to warrant the world's attention toward a just,
equitable and permanent solution to the tone of what was worked
out in Bosnia and East Timor for its' minorities.
Today,
It is confronted with a grave challenge, a challenge to BD minority
own existence, a challenge to the world community as to what kind
of civilization it will usher in for the generations that will
follow us. We are confident about our resolve to meet this challenge
and any challenge head on. We remain hopeful that the world community
will take up the issue and adequately respond to this human rights
crisis.
Finally,
the rise of militant Islam in Bangladesh is a 'menace' to our
lives and an 'overcast' on our civilization. We must defeat this
menacing face of terror and fundamentalism and defeat we will.
So long there is violation of human rights, anyone's rights.We
will continue to inform and challenge the world community. To
that end, as a Nobel Laureate, the bravest of all, our pride,
Rabindra Nath Tagore proclaimed more than a hundred years ago,
we say: "Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country
awake".
The
writer is a seasoned journalist specializing in South East Asian
Affairs. He reports for Far Eastern Economic Review and has written
5 books on Burma. This paper was presented by him at a conference
in New York on February 9, 2003
