Dhaka, July 30 (IANS) As attacks on minority communities continue unabated in Bangladesh, a leading minority rights organisation on Thursday documented 824 incidents of human-rights violations targeting religious and ethnic minority communities across 63 of the country’s 64 districts during the first half of this year.
In its latest report titled ‘The Persecution Continues: Minority Communities Under Sustained Attack in Bangladesh’, the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM) said that the 824 incidents recorded between January and June include murders and mysterious deaths, kidnappings and physical assaults, rape and other forms of sexual violence, attacks on temples and religious institutions, land grabbing, arson, looting, attacks on minority-owned property, and blasphemy-related persecution.
“The geographic breadth, frequency, and recurring nature of these incidents demonstrate that the insecurity facing Bangladesh’s minority communities cannot reasonably be characterised as a collection of isolated local disputes or ordinary criminal acts. Similar patterns of violence and intimidation have been documented across rural and urban areas alike, affecting individuals and families, women and girls, religious institutions, minority- owned homes and businesses, ancestral land, and Indigenous communities,” the HRCBM stated.
As per the findings, the documented incidents revealed a geographic pattern of insecurity and vulnerability affecting minority communities across Bangladesh.
“Property attacks, land grabbing, arson, and looting were documented in 57 districts; kidnapping and physical assault in 55 districts; murders and mysterious deaths in 53 districts; and attacks on temples and religious institutions in 49 districts. The national distribution of these violations underscores the need to examine them not merely as individual cases, but as part of a broader environment in which minority communities remain exposed to violence, intimidation, dispossession, and inadequate institutional protection,” the report mentioned.
According to the HRCBM, the recurrence of attacks against temples, religious institutions, and sacred symbols across numerous districts demonstrates continuing vulnerability surrounding the protection of minority religious communities, while raising concerns over safeguarding freedom of religion or belief in Bangladesh.
Highlighting a disturbing pattern of violence against minority women and girls, the HRCBM documented 41 incidents of sexual violence, rape, or gang rape during the reporting period.
This involved sexual and gender-based violence affecting minority women and girls, including rape, attempted rape, sexual harassment, child sexual abuse, abduction-related concerns, and allegations involving coercive marriage or religious conversion.
The HRCBM also reported multiple incidents affecting indigenous and ethnic minority communities, including members of the Chakma, Tripura and other communities, particularly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh.
“The documented incidents encompass killings and suspicious deaths, abduction, physical assault, threats, political intimidation, land-related conflict, alleged excessive or unlawful use of force, and broader community insecurity. These cases require separate consideration because the vulnerability of Indigenous peoples in Bangladesh is shaped not by a single form of discrimination, but by the intersection of ethnic identity, ancestral land rights, political representation,” it noted.
The rights body called on the government of Bangladesh to establish an independent national inquiry into documented violence and persecution affecting religious, ethnic, and indigenous minorities across the country during the reporting period.
It urged the authorities to create a centralised minority-rights incident monitoring mechanism covering killings, suspicious deaths, sexual violence, abduction, temple attacks, land grabbing, arson, looting, extortion, and intimidation.
–IANS
scor/ksk/as
