The Trio: Yunus, Pranab and CAAMB

The Trio: Yunus, Pranab and CAAMB

Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time - Eighty SIX

Palash Biswas


Prof Muhammad Yunus announced his decision to enter politics in Kolkata having discussed the matter with Caste Hindu Indian nazi leaders and he formally launched his Nagarik Shakti Party amid expectation of Indian Brahmin numbetr two in the NRI prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh cabinet headed by a well known foreigner Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Yesterday in Habra mufassil of North 24 Parganas, Mohit Roy organised the third international convention of CAAMB, campaign against Minorities in bangladesh.
Aiming to provide political goodwill, qualified leadership and good governance, Bangladesh Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus made a foray into politics making a formal launch of his "Nagorik Shakti (citizen's strength)" party. Yunus, whose experiments with micro credit earned him a nobel prize and Bangladesh the reputation of being the home of poor man's banking, declined to elaborate immediately on the outline of his party or his associates saying he would come up with the details "soon".
"Our party will contest elections from all the 300 constituencies," he told reporters on his return to capital Dhaka from the southeastern port city of Chittagong. The announcement came days after Yunus in an open letter sought public views on his decision to enter politics. The Nobel laureate in his letter had said his main goal would be to establish political goodwill, qualified leadership and good governance if he gets positive response from the people.
"Nagoric Shakti" emerges visibly to counter the divisive politics of Bangladesh's two major political parties former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League (AL) and her arch-rival immediate past premier Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Is tis all nothing but a coincidence.

Pranab Mukherjee is reminiscent of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who with all his heart hates Muslims as well as Hindus who crossed the border from earlier part of ERast bengal. He is dedicated to implement the incomplete task of dr Bidhan Chandra roy who along with another brahmin Pdt Jawarlalnehru never treted the underclasses as partition victims and settled for an adhoc rehabilation in camps with Dole as charity. they had decided to push back all refugees from east Bengal. Heading the parliamentarystanding committee Pranab Babu never heard from the refugees and stimulated the new Citizenship Amendment act of India to be translated in a draconian law with a target to deport Two Coroe Illegal Migrants from Bangladesh. The law is already enforced with an effect rejecting bonafied citizenship of all those who settled in different parts of india in between all six decades past.

Mohit roy is considered very close to Mr Mukherjee. Mr roy himself is a caste hindu and well established professor. While all refugee organisations are fighting to defend the citizenship of refugees , Mr Roy is busy to highlight demographic changes in West Bengal on Sangha Pariwar line . The campaign is not anything else which Mr Narendra Modi launched in gujarat and BJP did with demolition of Babri Masjid. Mind you Shayma Prasad Mukherjee who is most responsible to creat fear psyche of majority Muslim dominance amongst dalits of East Bengal , instituted Bharatiya Janasangh which translated itself in BJP. Hindu Mahasabha was the most vocal organ of Brahmins pleading for partitioning Bengal as they could not bear dominance of Muslims who are actually converted untouchables. It is a BJP home minister, Ram Janma Bhoomi and Demolition Babri masjid fame , charges against whom had been farmed in court in this connection, who eventually introduced the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2003 with a target to deport the partition victim refugees.

Bangladesh has always denied the charges of influx of Bangladesh Nationals in India and also the charges of Minority Persecution in Bangladesh.

The Ruling Parties in India, Left as well as Right have used the refugees and the Muslims as captive vote bank. The Tamash continuous is well exposed in NandiGram and due to elections in four states including Uttar Paradesh with a siezable Muslim population, SEZ drive is capped by the Government of India as well as West Bengal Government.

Brhmin Hindu leaders of Aryan roots never accept the citizenship of majority Mool Nivasi dalit, traibal and minority population which amounts Eighty Five percent.

Bengali Refugees were naver welcome in India. Punjabi refugees got citizenship with the regitration of the refugees and were resettled with compensation and rehabilatition of their choice on war footing. they got the political power. But resttled Bengali refugees of Partition and thereafter are never considered either Citizens or Refugees.

The new Citizenship Act denies citizenship by Birth. Thus, generation after generation being bonafied citizens of India, all bengali refugees are termed as bangladeshi. All bengali Muslims are identified as Bangladeshi Nationals.

Pranab Mukherjee with his Congress and Left co MPs helped to pass the Bjp sponsored Bill in Parliament. Then congress came in power with outside help from the leftists. This government along with all the state governments have launched an Operation Deport Bengali Refugees and Muslims.
Just imagin what happens if in any coincidence, Pranab Mukherjee or Buddhadeb becomes the Prime Minister?

Well, Pranab Mukherjee is in favour to allow the captive votebank stay in India as Refugee if the Dalit lot is ready to quit the claims of citizenship.

Hence, Mohit Roy and CAAMB citing persecution in Bangladesh and demographic changes demands Refugee Status undermining the status of indian Citizenship to all refugees.

Is it a mere coincidence only that a reluctant Economist finds himself ambitious enough to makle an attempt for statepower and Pranab Mukherjee lands in Dhaka and a day before Mohit Roy demand refugee status for all those Dalit Bonafied citizens of India who led once upon a time the Dalit movement of India and ensured the Great Entry Of Baba Sahib Bheem Rao Ambedkar in Constitution assembly?

News From Bangladesh published an open questions to the Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee which are quite relevent. mr Mukherjee must respond.

Monday February 19 2007 12:59:39 PM BDT

Is Bangladesh a friendly neighbour country for India?

Why each and everyday Indian BSF is killing Banglai people at the border area?

Why India gives shelter corropted politicians, gundas(Thugs), extortionists, mafiagodfathers from Bangladesh in Calcutta?

Why India uses Farakka by controlling water from Padma to dry Bangladesh?

Dr. Majumder
Germany
====================

Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee arrives in Dhaka today to invite Bangladesh to attend the 14th Saarc summit to be held in New Delhi on April 3-4.Mukherjee will hand over a formal invitation letter from Indian (The Daily Star) Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to President Iajuddin Ahmed at Bangabhaban.

He will also call on Chief Adviser of the caretaker government Fakhruddin Ahmed, who is expected to lead the Bangladesh delegation to the Saarc summit.

"Let me say unequivocally that this caretaker government wishes to place Bangladesh's relations with India on a firm footing so that future governments of both countries can build on the progress we make," Foreign Affairs Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury told the media on the eve of Mukherjee's daylong visit to Dhaka.

He said: "We are looking forward to our meeting and talks with Pranab Mukherjee...We sincerely believe, this can only be to our mutual benefit."

During his stay in Dhaka, the Indian minister will also meet BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia and Awami League President Sheikh Hasina.

Hasina Reacts

The Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, on Saturday launched a broadside against the ‘persons who are making preparations for entering politics after waging virulent campaigns against the politicians.’ Without naming Nobel laureate Professor Mohammed Yunus, the AL president said she saw ‘no difference between usurers and those who accept bribes’ and added, ‘it is amusing that those who despise politicians are now trying to be politicians themselves.’
‘Why are you so interested in politics after criticising politicians indiscriminately?’ she asked.
‘Those who lend money at a high rate of interest can never fight against poverty; rather, they nurture poverty,’ she told an audience of cultural activists at her Dhanmandi office in the morning.
Hasina said the present interim administration was a result of the movement of her alliance against the ‘corrupt and greedy BNP-Jamaat government’ and called for safeguarding the people’s voting right.
‘We are passing through a special situation which has been created by the corruption and insatiable greed of the BNP-Jamaat alliance for power and wealth,’ she said.
The AL chief said that the ‘BNP-Jamaat alliance’ had wanted to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth by holding a farcical election on January 22 but their attempt failed.’ ‘The present interim government headed by Fakhruddin Ahmed is the result of our movement,’ she said when exchanging views with the leaders of Bangalee Sangskriti Mancha, a combine of different cultural organisations. Hasina said that those who had captured state power turning politicians overnight looted public wealth and pushed the country to the brink of disaster. She urged the quarters concerned not to make sweeping allegations against politicians as ‘there are also honest politicians in the country.’ She also urged the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to disclose the names of those who whitened their black money and called for taking account of the wealth of corrupt people since the independence of Bangladesh. AL leaders Tofail Ahmed, Abdul Jalil, Matia Chowdhury, Obaidul Kader and Bangalee Sangskriti Mancha leaders Alamgir Kumum, Abdul Matin Bhuiyan and ATM Shamsuzzaman were, among others, present at the programme.

Nagarik shakti Emerges
The political party to be floated by Prof Muhammad Yunus is likely to be styled "Nagarik Shakti" or "Citizen's Power."The Nobel laureate disclosed this yesterday to the reporters at the Zia International Airport on his return from Chittagong.(The Daily Star), "I will formally launch the party later this month and it might be named Nagarik Shakti," Yunus said adding "The way things are going on, there is no scope to stay out of politics.....we have to move forward."
Yunus said that 20-member village-level and ward-level party committees will be formed to muster support for his nascent party. These committees would be known as 'Yunus Samarthak Goshthi' or 'Yunus Supporters' Groups.'
In a significant departure from conventional political practice, the Nobel peace prize-winner has proposed that his party activists would work as 'volunteers' and bear all costs of electing nominees for their constituencies.

"If locals want to see good people elected, they will have to spend their own money," he added.

Asked to comment on Awami League President Sheikh Hasina's remarks on micro-credit, Yunus said "I do not want to get into a politics of war of words. We have had enough of divisive politics. I want to be in politics with everyone."
"There is no way I can continue to stay away from politics. I am determined...and it does not matter who says what about me," the Nobel laureate said in his reply to the reporters' questions on supposedly veiled allegations made against him in the past few days.

On February 22, Yunus is set to send a second open letter to follow up on last week's open letter to all Bangladeshis urging them to give their opinion on whether he should join politics and launch a party. His aides have refused to provide any statistics of the responses till date, but have termed the feedback as "positive".

Now see the minority staus in India. Mind you that Bengali Dalit refugees also happen to be minorities in India as the Muslims are.

Indian Muslims - An Oppressed Minority
By Abdul Haq
India has a unique experience of Muslim minority. A dominant minority in the medieval period became a dominated minority, all of a sudden with the advent of British rule in India. This sudden change resulted into complex problems. Partition of sub-continent in Aug 47 converted the Muslim community of India into 'Pakistani Muslims' and 'Indian Muslims'. This was a great shock as far as Indian Muslims are concerned. The rulers of Yesterday, now had to live under the 'Hindu rule'. Fifty years having passed, the Muslims who opted to stay in India are still getting a raw deal in every sphere of life. They are still drowned in the scourge of poverty and backwardness. They continue fighting the ever-hunting spectra of communal riots and threats to their religious and cultural identity. The sense of insecurity experienced by the Indian Muslims in the post partition period has been compounded in recent years by the state repression and terrorism under the 'draconian', Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). Under this act 7,9332 people, mostly Muslims were detained and tortured during 1990-95 across the country. Though the Act has been repealed, yet about 5000 persons, mostly Muslims, are still in jails.

And now read something about Gujrat.

Indian state of Gujrat is in flame. The state capital, Ahmedabad has witnessed one of the worst kind of communal violence in years that resulted into over 300 dead mostly being Muslims.. Gujrat’s history is marred with occasional communal violence but not at the scale that started on February 28,2002 as sequel to the gruesome act in Godhra that left 64 people were churned inside train bogies that was carrying “Kar Sevaks”( labours for construction of Ram Mandir) to Ayodhya. It was reported that the worst kind of incidence that took place at Godhra railway station has been initiated by the Muslim community of the area though no formal investigation is completed. This “Kar Sevaks” was going to Ayodhya for stone laying ceremony of Ram Mandir as declared earlier. The BJP president in a recent press conference stated that both ISI of Pakistan and the congress have hand in the incidence. Whatever may be the case the fact remains that BJP ruling elite both at the center and in the states of Gujrat has failed to protect the secular image of India. There has been enough warning from VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and the “Ram Janmabhumi Binnayas”(god Ram’s birthplace reconstruction) chief Mr. Paramhangsha Ramchandra when both declared to March towards Ayodhya, UP (Uttar Pradesh) for completing the unfinished task of constructing temple on the site of demolished Babri Mosque site. The issue became an election manifesto for ruling BJP state government that they lost. BJP’s dismal performance in four states specially that of in UP is seen as the decline of Bop’s hold on to the power in the center. It was VHP that still remains a driving force behind BJP’s political strength and Ayodhya issue has been the test case for rise of extreme Hindu nationalism in once known to be the secular democracy of India.
The Vishawa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu extremist group connected to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was pressing ahead with plans to construct a temple to the Hindu god Ram in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya. The VHP insists on building the temple on the site of the Babri Masjid (mosque), which was torn down by Hindu fanatics in 1992. The campaign threatens to fan religious communalism in the region right at the point when India and Pakistan are engaged in a tense military standoff. This comes at a time when the governments of India’s neighbouring countries are trying to grapple with the existing religious extremists those are otherwise challenging the authorities.
Earlier the VHP had set a deadline of March 12 for the BJP-led government to hand over the land to allow the construction to begin. As the party was facing crucial elections in few key states, BJP could not support such unfavorable demand when the party candidates were wooing the minority Muslim votes specially in UP but did not come heavily on VHP. However, to press their demands, Hindu fanatics initiated a march from Ayodhya to New Delhi late last month that drew considerable support from hard-liner Hindu supporters. So- called “Karsevaks” has started gathering in Ayodhya (one report now suggests that they have been told to leave Ayodhya). VHP, along with yet another Hindu militant organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), mobilised physically destroy the mosque in 1992 that sparked Hindu Muslim riot all over the Subcontinent that included Bangladesh. In a fact that was worst kind of sectarian violence since the independence of the country other wise known to be most tolerant society than other major countries of the region. India saw a worst type of violence in the form of Mumbai (Bombay) riot preceded by famously known as Bombay blast.

Nobel Prizewinner’s Hat Alters the Political Ring in Bangladesh

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI, Feb. 18 — The only version of democracy known to the small, crowded, flood-prone country known as Bangladesh has been a small, crowded, violence-prone contest between its two begums or ladies — as they are also known — who lead its two rival political parties, Sheik Hasina Wajed, of the Awami League, and Khaleda Zia, of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

On Sunday, though, there was a significant shift of the tectonic plates of Bangladeshi politics as Muhammad Yunus, the founder of a microfinance empire known as the Grameen Bank and the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, announced that he would start a new party and step into the electoral fray.

“There is no way I can stay away from politics any longer — I am determined,” Mr. Yunus told reporters in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, according to Reuters.

When that fray might begin is anyone’s guess. Democracy has been suspended for five weeks after the government declared an emergency and called off elections that had been scheduled for Jan. 22. The emergency measure was enacted after months of debilitating protest by the Awami League, which accused the last government, led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, of rigging the election process. The Awami League vowed to disrupt the voting. Chaos loomed.

Bangladesh, which became independent from Pakistan in 1971, has had long periods of military rule. Democracy was restored in 1991, after the toppling of Gen. H. M. Ershad.

Since Jan. 11, when the emergency was declared, Bangladesh has been under the rule of a caretaker administration led by Fakhruddin Ahmed, a former central bank governor, and quietly supported by the army. Mr. Ahmed has promised to draft a new voter list, one of the Awami League’s main points of contention, and to issue voter identification cards before scheduling elections. That could potentially take months. The government has not yet issued a timetable for the elections.

Mr. Ahmed’s government has also vowed to cleanse politics of corruption and thuggery and has arrested several thousand people, including a handful of high-ranking politicians from the two parties. On Sunday, the government announced the names of several dozen politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen in Bangladesh who it said must account for their personal wealth or risk having it be confiscated by the state. Bangladesh has repeatedly appeared at or near the bottom of Transparency International’s annual corruption ranking, based on surveys of business executives and analysts.

Democracy in Bangladesh takes a breather
Elections suspended while military tries to fix flawed system
Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, February 18, 2007
(02-18) 04:00 PST Dhaka , Bangladesh -- For a nation steeped in political crisis, life seems remarkably calm on the sun-dappled streets.

Women haggle in the market. Shopkeepers trade the daily dish while smoking cigarettes and spitting jets of betel juice. Traffic moves at a crawl, when it moves at all, which is business as usual on the sclerotic roads of this densely packed capital.

But the apparent normalcy masks a sobering reality: namely, that democracy in Bangladesh lies battered and broken -- and the military has stepped in to fix it.

Since Jan. 11, this country of 147 million people has been under an official state of emergency. Elections scheduled for January have been suspended indefinitely. A caretaker government backed by the army now rules the land, dedicated, or so its civilian leaders say, to cleaning up Bangladesh's corrupt, thuggish political system so a free and fair poll can take place. Mass arrests have landed thousands of Bangladeshis in jail.

It has all the signs of a coup d'etat. Yet that is a term no one is willing to use out loud, because the newly installed government, at least for the moment, enjoys broad support at home and abroad.

The widespread approval stems from the grim calculation that the alternative would have been far worse: a rigged election followed by a bloodbath.

In the weeks before the planned poll, political agitation by the two main parties triggered paralyzing strikes and violence in which at least 45 people were killed. Analysts warned that Bangladesh, home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations, risked collapse, with Islamic radicals ready to step in.

Now, the country is savoring a reprieve from the chaos.

"There seems to be a sense of relief," said Owen Lippert, director of the Dhaka office of the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute. "A state (of affairs) that was generating strikes ... and some deaths -- people certainly don't miss that."

The welcome return to stability, however, has somewhat obscured the basic question of when, or whether, democratic rule will be restored in a nation that has experienced more than its share of military meddling -- 21 coups or attempted coups in its 36 years of existence.

Headed by a widely respected former central bank governor, Fakhruddin Ahmed, the new interim government has declined to fix a date for the postponed election. Instead, it has introduced an ambitious package of political and other reforms that call into question just how long it intends to stay in power.

To pave the way for a new poll, Ahmed promised to introduce voter identification cards, depoliticize the election commission and purge voter rolls, which international election observers say are swollen with 12 million duplicate names. These measures have won domestic and international praise.

But Ahmed also vowed to root out corruption, alleviate Bangladesh's chronic electricity woes and keep a lid on rising prices -- problems that will require months, if not years, to solve.

The incumbent Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the opposition Awami League, bitter rivals that rarely agree, have called for an election within three to four months. Suggestions that the poll might be put off until the end of the year, or even into 2008, have rung alarm bells.

So have the mass arrests. Bangladesh's fearsome Rapid Action Battalion, a joint force of police and soldiers, has rounded up an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people, a campaign that has netted, not without some public support, many political operatives and local bosses from the two main parties.

Reports of at least 19 deaths in custody have sparked protests from local and international human-rights groups.

"Our people want this caretaker government to hold an election," said Sheikh Hasina Wajed, leader of the Awami League and prime minister from 1996 to 2001. "An unelected government cannot run for long."

Perhaps not, but it is also doubtful that ordinary Bangladeshis are in any hurry for a return to politics as usual.

Many are angry about the corruption and naked power plays entrenched in Bangladeshi politics, and about the lack of improvement in their lives. The economy has grown at a moderate pace in recent years, but half the population still languishes below the poverty line.

Even the Nobel Prize awarded to microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus, which prompted a huge national celebration here in his homeland, served to highlight the failure of the state in providing economic opportunities for its people.

In October, a survey in the Daily Star newspaper found that a majority of voters had grown disenchanted as a result of what the paper described as "interparty bickering, unbridled corruption, total lack of governance and signs of dynastic politics."

Many blame Bangladesh's ills on the two women who have traded power since direct military rule ended in 1991: Wajed, of the Awami League, and Khaleda Zia, head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, who served as prime minister from 1991 to 1996 and from 2001 until last fall, when she stepped down in advance of the planned election.

Both women inherited their positions from assassinated former leaders.

Wajed's father, the founder of Bangladesh, and most of her family were killed during a military coup in 1975, a massacre Wajed accuses Zia's husband of having helped plot. Zia's husband, a general-turned-president, was in turn assassinated in 1981 during an attempted coup.

The enmity between the two women is legendary, and their rivalry looms large over politics here.

In an interview, Wajed denied harboring animus toward her archrival. But she went on to accuse Zia and her cronies of condoning the killing of Awami League supporters, the rape of young women and an unsuccessful 2004 attempt on Wajed's life.

"After seeing all these atrocities, then I don't feel like meeting those people who are the root cause of the suffering," Wajed said. "It's nothing personal."

Zia declined requests for an interview.

The fierce battle between their followers forced Bangladesh to a screeching halt in the months before the scheduled election.

The Awami League, alleging widespread electoral irregularities by the BNP, mounted nationwide strikes that crippled the economy. Foreign monitors withdrew their blessing from the poll, in effect concurring that the BNP had stacked the election.

Diplomats and analysts say the military, still the ultimate arbiter of power in Bangladesh, decided to step in to end the turmoil. Despite the army's historical ties to the BNP, the United Nations warned military leaders that if they took sides, the army's lucrative role in U.N. peacekeeping operations could be threatened.

So far, the army's intervention has been fairly low-key and behind the scenes. No tanks rolled in to the capital. There are few soldiers on the streets. The new government's members are civilians, and no senior military figure has put himself forward as the savior of the country.

Bangladeshis seem prepared to give the military-backed government a chance. Even the mass arrests do not faze them; many privately voice support for the roundup of perceived troublemakers. Criticism of the detentions from foreign governments has been mild.

That worries Farhad Mazhar, an adviser to the human-rights group Odhikar, which has spoken out against the arrests and deaths in custody. Mazhar cautioned the government against dragging its feet on the election and called on the international community to keep the pressure on the caretaker administration.

"We should not give more than six months to this government," Mazhar said. "That should be said very clearly, with one voice. Six months is enough."


Human Rights Conference on Bangladesh Minorities
Press Release
Hindu American Foundation Addresses
Human Rights Conference on Bangladesh Minorities
http://www.hinduamericanfoundation.org/media_press_release_bangladesh_ros.htm

NEW YORK (Mar. 18, 2006) - A member of the Hindu American Foundation’s (HAF) Executive Council addressed the “Sixth International Conference on Religious & Ethnic Cleansing and Terrorism in Bangladesh: The Role of Govt. and Civil Society,” a conference organized by the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist & Christian Unity Council (BHBUC) USA on February 26, 2006, in New York.

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-FL, was the keynote speaker. Other notable speakers included Subrata Choudhury of the Bangladesh Supreme Court Bar Association; Saleem Samad, journalist and former Bangladesh Bureau chief of TIME-ASIA Magazine; and Dr. Sachi Dastidar, former chair, Department of Politics, Economics and Society, State University of New York.

“The failure of the Bangladesh Government to end the atrocities on minorities and the dangers to the region as well as the world from rising Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh are a cause for concern,” cautioned Swaminathan Venkataraman, one of HAF’s Executive Council members, in his address to the conference. “It is high time that the moral weight of the US Congress is brought to bear upon this issue,” he said. Discussing the Congressional Research Service’s report on Bangladesh, Ros-Lehtinen spoke at length about the human rights violations and ethnic cleansing that has been visited upon the minorities of Bangladesh. “Hindus have a history of being peaceful, pluralistic and understanding of other faiths and peoples, yet minority Hindus have endured decades of pain and suffering without the attention of the world”, she said.
From Left to Right: Dr. Jiten Roy (BHBCUC); Dr. Dwijen Bhattacharjya (Spokesperson (BHBCUC); Mr. Swaminathan Venkataraman (HAF; Mr. Bidyut Sarkar (BHBCUC); Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; Mr. Saleem Samad, formerly with TIME-ASIA (living in exile); Captain Sachin Karmakar (living in exile); and Mr. Shontosh Shaha (BHBUC)

In October 2005, HAF submitted a draft resolution that would call attention to the significant human rights violations occurring against Hindu minorities in Bangladesh, among other regions, to Ros-Lehtinen. Venkataraman urged her to finalize a resolution for submission to the US Congress and called for a statement of strong condemnation of the atrocities against Hindu minorities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir and elsewhere, to be released onto the House floor.

Venkataraman thanked Ros-Lehtinen for endorsing HAF’s first annual report on the status of Hindu human rights in Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir released in July 2005. Entitled “Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Kashmir: A survey of Human Rights 2004”, the report compiles media coverage and first-hand accounts of human rights violations perpetrated against Hindus because of their religious identity. The full text of the first annual HAF Hindu human rights report is available at http://www.hinduamericanfoundation.org/HHR2004.pdf

The Hindu American Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3), non-partisan organization, promoting the Hindu and American ideals of understanding, tolerance and pluralism.


posted Saturday, October 07, 2006 9:32 AM by sarbhadharme

Bangladesh: Report of Repression against Bangladesh Minorities for the month of August 2006 from national dailies
A minority family fleeing away in fear of the terrorists in Shariatpur District (The Daily Ajker Kagoj, 12th August, 06)
Our Correspondent

SHARIATPUR, August 12:-An innocent minority family of Naria of Shariatpur district has been seeking the local administration’s assistance for the last fifteen days after fleeing away from the village in fear of the local influential terrorists.

According to the family source, the minority family of the village Kolargaon of Ghorisha union of Shariatpur Upazila has been facing oppression and torture of an influential group of terrorists since long. Apart from forcibly catching fishes from his pond and taking away trees after cutting, the terrorists at one stage is trying to grab the pond and also his land. The local terrorists have threatened innocent Hindu minority Bakta Banik to leave the house.

A group of terrorists led by influential Masum tried to confine him in a bag on last 23rd July on his way to the Market. During the attack, the local people came forward to rescue Banik after hearing his screaming but by that time the miscreants managed to flee away.

Police have filed a general diary after a written complains to the police station. Then police have convinced Banik just to file a general diary. A case will be taken later just after discussing the matter with the SP (Police Super).

The local OC Kazi Abdul Hashem says to the journalists, “we will take action in accordance with Banik’s allegation just investigation is compiled, but Masum Khan was not involved in this kind of any misdeed”. Police considered Masum as their source and as a result they simply filed a general diary


posted on Monday, February 19, 2007