RELIGIOUS MINORITIES FROM BANGLADESH RALLY IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE
April 10, 2013 | Washington DC :: Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council-USA, Hindu American Foundation, Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM), World Hindu Council of America (VHPA), along with faith based and community Coalitions from the East Coast, organized a massive rally at the White House in Washington D.C. in protest against the continued attacks on Hindu and other minority communities by the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party. More than one thousand people formed a human chain in from of the White House demanding immediate action from United States and the International Community. The protesters came in 10 buses from New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and Pennsylvania, and were joined by their counterparts from Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. The protesters also sent their representatives to meet Congressional staffers and members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission House Committee of Foreign Affairs.
Bangladesh is universally known as a largely ethnically homogeneous country. Indeed, its name derives from the Bengali ethno-linguistic group, which comprises 98% of the population. So a uniform growth across the country’s population spectrum is what anyone would expect.
At that rate, a comparable population chart would have shown Bangladeshi Minorities to be at about 29.3 million. But their number, as it stands now, is a meager 15.8 million. This represents a net loss of around 15.5 million Bangladeshi minorities and their direct heirs, or about 8.3 in sheer percentage terms. This reflects one of the largest displacements of population based on ethnic or religious identity in recent history. The world must recognize this dangerous phenomenon and act with the tenacity and urgency it deserved. When a combined total population of about a dozen European Union countries or the combined total population of more than fifteen U.S. States is vanished from a country about the size of Greece or the State of New York in just forty years, it can be called nothing but genocide and must be confronted as such.
This tragedy sits atop the history’s infamies right along with the Holocaust. The only difference is that Holocaust ended with the tragic massacre of 6 million innocent Jews while our struggle for survival continues and the terrors lurking all around us with no end in sight.
Addressing the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission House Committee of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Sitangshu Guha of the Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council said, “It has not come to this overnight.
Years of persecution by the successive governments and organized attacks on minorities and their interests by the Islamists (BNP and Jamat-e-Islami) have led to this dark hour of civilization. The current wave of violence against the Hindus transpiring in the wake of the International Judicial Tribunal’s verdict against Delwar Hossain Sayedee, a notorious war criminal and terrorist, is therefore not a new phenomenon. The verdict was simply a pretext for the Islamists to attack the Hindus to grab their land, loot their property, and drive them away from the country just like they have done during every single election since 1971, during any International development or controversy involving Muslims or their religion, or just rumors involving Islam in the past”.
Many of the protesters at the ‘White House Rally’ felt, that Hindus and other religious minorities’ need an ‘international taskforce’, on the lines of the ones created in Kosovo, that would oversee safe havens for Hindus inside Bangladesh. They demanded that the Government of Bangladesh be pressurized to rebuild the temples that have been destroyed over the years, and a Minority Welfare Ministry be set up with a specialized police force drawn from the religious minorities.
Jay Kansara of Hindu American Foundation, which led the outreach effort at the Capitol Hill, underlined the need for a unified effort and support from the Hindu constituency from around the United States.
For more information contact
Utsav Chakrabarti
Washington DC Liaison, Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM)
Cell 443-691-059 Email: utsavc@gmail.com
