NGOs, academic observers, and several journalists alleged that the ruling Awami League’s student wing, the Chhatro League, played a critical role in organizing the attacks against Buddhist religious sites in Ramu in 2012.
Source/Credit: Dhaka Tribune
By Tribune Report | August 2, 2014
The Ahmadiyya Muslim community continued to face harassment
A US government report has said the Bangladesh government had failed to protect vulnerable groups and religious minority communities.
The 2013 report on International Religious Freedom, submitted annually by the US State Department to the United States Congress, is an in-depth international assessment on the current state of religious freedom in countries around the world. “The report covers government policies violating religious belief and practices of groups, religious denominations and individuals, and US policies to promote religious freedom around the world,” according to the US Department of State’s website.
The report said government officials including the police were slow to protect members of minority religious groups from violence and that there were several reports of involvement of government-affiliated actors in such violence.
The report noted that although nineteen criminal cases had been filed after the December 2012 attacks against Buddhists in Ramu, Ukhia, and Teknaf, leading to 364 people being indicted by police in seven related cases and 193 arrests, the main investigation remained stalled. It noted that NGOs, academic observers, and several journalists alleged that the ruling Awami League’s student wing, the Chhatro League, played a critical role in organizing the attacks against Buddhist religious sites in Ramu in 2012, the report said.
The government response to the December 2012 attacks included 200 million taka ($2.5 million) in funding for the reconstruction of all 19 burned temples and monasteries by Border Guard Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Army’s Engineering Corps. The prime minister inaugurated the rebuilt structures in Ramu and Ukhia on September 3, the report noted.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim community continued to face harassment. For instance, the Islamist group Tehrik-e-Khatme Nabuwwat held a rally in Dhaka against the Ahmadiyya on January 3. Police made no arrests, according to the report.
Government and many civil society leaders stated that violence against members of minority religious groups normally had economic or criminal dimensions, and could not be attributed solely to religious belief or affiliation, the report said.
According to a major Bangladeshi human rights organization, Ain o Salish Kendra, (ASK), which publishes annual statistics on violence against religious minorities, 495 statues, monasteries, or temples were destroyed; 278 homes and 208 businesses were destroyed; 188 persons were injured; and one person was killed during 2013. Local and international press, human rights organisations, and Hindu community leaders blamed the attacks on Shibir, the student wing of the Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami.
Both the BNP and Jamaat have called for the attacks to cease and refused to accept any blame for the violence. ASK stated that violence by Jamaat supporters had been designed to intimidate the government from conducting further war crimes trials.
Representatives of religious minorities stated that police, in some instances, failed to arrest perpetrators of abuses and that courts failed to administer justice effectively. In November, a mob assaulted a Hindu man and set fire to 26 homesteads in a predominantly Hindu village in Bonogram, Pabna. The police reportedly did not detain any of the perpetrators the victim named but did detain an individual who sheltered Hindus during the attack.
Read original post here: Bangladesh: Govt not doing enough to protect religious minorities
This content-post is archived for backup and to keep archived records of any news Islam Ahmadiyya. The views expressed by the author and source of this news archive do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of Ahmadiyya Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comments. Any comments irrelevant to the post's subject matter, containing abuses, and/or vulgar language will not be approved.