Press Release

ICHRRF issued yet another call to the United Nations, governments and international Human Rights organizations to break their silence on this perpetual cycle of escalating violence that could potentially destabilize the entire region. In an increasingly worrying trend, this is the fifth time in the last 12 months that ICHRRF has had to raise the alarm on massive Muslim mob violence on Bangladesh's beleaguered Hindu minority, which is being ethnically cleansed.

Regional news outlets are buzzing with reports of Hindu temples, homes and businesses being vandalized, looted and torched by mobs, and Hindus beaten in the Narail District of Bangladesh today. Typically, there are complaints of police inaction. Over 70 homes have been burned and over 200 Hindus beaten.

As with most other rampages in recent times, this spate of targeted violence also began after false rumors of a Facebook post by a local Hindu allegedly belittling Islam, incurring the wrath of the Islamic clergy and local Muslim neighbors for blasphemy. The attacks have drawn widespread regional condemnation, including from the Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigoshthi, the largest cultural organization in the country.

Over the past several years, false charges and rumors of blasphemy have routinely been used by the Muslim clergy to rabble rouse and incite violence on local Hindus. Bangladesh has also enacted laws against 'hate speech', which are used solely to target any perceived 'Islamophobia' and silence critics of the government and the Islamist agenda. Muslim clergy routinely engage in blood-curdling rhetoric against minority religions, particularly Hinduism, replete with hate speech and unchallenged polemic, none of which is acted against under these alleged laws on hate speech.

All of these attacks clearly bear the signature of religious hate, whether it involves vandalism, looting, arson, desecration or targeted sexual violence. In another incident today, two Muslim intruders force-fed beef to a disabled Hindu in front of his pleading wife in Dakshin Bahagali village in Kishoreganj, Nilphamari. The intent was to dishonor the religious vows and lifestyle choices of local Hindus, who generally abstain from certain meats such as beef.

Only recently, in April 2022, ICHRRF released its Report on the Hearings on Human Rights Violations in Bangladesh. This Report examines all available evidence and scrutinizes various false narratives commonly used to rationalize the spiral of violence that stretches back decades but witnessed a significant uptick in recent years. It is regrettable that international and national Human Rights organizations have often cited some of these easily debunked narratives to justify their silence on the ongoing ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide of the Bangladeshi minorities at the hands of Muslim religious organizations.

ICHRRF calls upon the United Nations to consider its recommendations in the above mentioned Report, and place conditions on its Peacekeeping contract with the Bangladesh security forces. Similarly, ICHRRF appeals to conscientious governments and private corporations globally, especially in the US and Germany, to make their fungible imports of Bangladeshi goods conditional upon an improvement in the treatment of minorities and human rights situation in that country.

ICHRRF hopes that the evidence and reports it is publishing will help to correct this anomaly and raise public awareness on the systematic Islamist violence in Bangladesh, which appears to have the tacit and often overt support of Bangladeshi government authorities and political parties.