Since student-led opposition protests led Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and flee Bangladesh on August 5, religious minorities say their communities have suffered violent attacks in the power vacuum.
Bangladesh is around 90% Muslim, with Christians and Buddhists making up most of the rest of the population. According to Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council head Oikya Parishad, four people who belonged to the minority community were killed between August 5 and 8, following the deposition of Sheikh Hasina’s government.
Parishad’s group estimates there have been more than 200 incidents where temples, religious crematoriums and other places of worship have also been vandalized and attacked by mobs.
The Bangladesh interim government insists reports of violence against minorities are exaggerated and often fake. The interim government also says whatever violence is happening is political, not sectarian.
Widespread violence largely subsided following the swearing-in of the interim government on August 8, minorities say the fear of persecution still looms over them during this time of political unrest.
The motive of other attacks can be more difficult to discern. According to local media reports, on August 5 the house of a famous musician Rahul Anand in the capital Dhaka was attacked and vandalized. The assailants threw the family out, ransacked their home and set it on fire along with a large number of musical instruments that Rahul had made and collected.
However Rahul, his wife and his wife’s business partner later posted on Facebook that the attack on Rahul’s house was not motivated by religious or communal reasons.
For many, including Shravasti Bandopadhyay, a student of Mass communication and Journalism in Dhaka University, it has been difficult to tell who is out to hurt or help them.
In a Facebook post shared by her teacher Kaberi Gayen at Dhaka University, Bandopadhyay wrote that she has had to abandon her home, staying with neighbors and sleeping in different places.
“I can’t make up my mind about what to think about my fellow countrymen as one the one hand, I’m dying in fear of death, because some of them had come to my house and threatened me , on the other hand there are others who took me to a safe place and still protecting me.”
Finding justice for victims
Muhammad Yunus, the chief adviser of the interim government, last week met with minority community representatives and said the government is focused on providing justice for all people, regardless of their faith, in remarks published by the Bangladesh news agency.
“If there is justice, who will not get justice, tell me? Who of any religion, any caste, any community won’t get it? Does the law say that these communities will go to this court, those communities will go to another court? Who has the power to discriminate here?” he said.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raised concerns over the reported attacks on minorities and said via a post on X last week that he had spoken to Yunus, who pledged “protection, safety and security” of minorities in the country.
The Indian government has set up a committee to monitor the India-Bangladesh border situation, reported Indian news media, NDTV. The committee will liaise with the authorities of Bangladesh regarding the security of the Indians staying there and the security of the minorities in Bangladesh.
Human rights activist Noor Khan Lytton told VOA that while it’s clear minorities have been under attack since the Sheikh Hasina government fell, political parties and social groups have stood up for targeted communities.
“We hope this kind of attack will not happen in the future again,” he said.
The General Secretary of the Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council Rana Dasgupta told VOA that although violence against minorities appears to have waned in recent days, there is still the matter of bringing those responsible to justice.
“In all the attacks on minorities in our country, we have seen a culture of impunity. Whether the new administration can come out of that culture of impunity remains to be seen” he said.
Dasgupta also said that people who had been displaced must also be given back the land they own.
