New Delhi: Between August 21 and December 31 last year, there were 174 incidents where members of Bangladesh’s religious minorities were targeted, a minority rights organisation in the country has claimed, adding that these include 23 murders.
The country’s interim government led by economist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has doubted the death toll put forward by the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) during a press conference on Thursday (January 30).
The organisation, which said its figures were based on information published in the newspapers, also accused the government of using the state machinery to discriminate against minorities, the Daily Star reported.
Apart from 23 minorities being killed in the aforementioned period, the BHBCUC said there were nine cases of women being tortured, raped or gang-raped; 64 instances of places of worship being vandalised; 15 instances of arrests and torture on accusations of insulting religion; 25 cases involving the forcible occupation of homes, land and enterprises; and 38 cases of attacks on homes and businesses, according to the Daily Star.
The group also said that the interim government “has begun using various important state institutions to carry out discriminatory actions against minorities”, AP quoted the group’s acting general secretary Manindra Nath as saying.
Shafiqul Alam, the press secretary to Yunus, said in a Facebook post that the BHBCUC “has a history of hugely exaggerating the figures of the communal violence victims”.
“Its earlier report on the death toll of minorities during the post July-August uprising days were hugely inflated,” Alam said.
The group had previously claimed that there were at least 2,010 incidents of violence against minorities between August 4 – when former premier Sheikh Hasina was deposed after weeks of deadly unrest – and August 21.
Of its figure of 23 deaths between August and December, Alam said: “Between 200 and 300 people are killed in Bangladesh every month. They include religious minorities.
“But the question is: were they killed due to religious reason? [sic] Were there any religious motivations behind the murders? Or are they regular law and order issues?”
The Daily Star reported that during its press conference on Wednesday, the BHBCUC also criticised the Bangladesh’s constitution reform commission recommending that secularism be removed as one of the constitution’s fundamental principles.
This omission, the BHBCUC argued as per the newspaper, amounted to opposing the freedom of religion and denying discrimination against minorities.
Prothom Alo reported that earlier this month, the commission recommended the removal of nationalism, socialism and secularism from among the constitution’s fundamental principles and that equality, human dignity, social justice and pluralism be inserted.
Nath, the BHBCUC’s acting general secretary, also called for the release of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, AP reported.
Accused of instigating a crowd to replace a Bangladeshi flag in Chattogram with a saffron-coloured one, Chinmoy Krishna was arrested and jailed on sedition charges in November. He has been denied bail since, including once earlier this month.
Since Hasina’s ouster, New Delhi and Dhaka have disagreed on the nature of minority persecution in Bangladesh and Chinmoy Krishna’s arrest, straining ties between the Modi and Yunus governments.
