Persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh
RAPE AND DISHONOUR
Girls young as 8 being raped ! What was their crime ??
... They were HINDU !
Bangladesh National Party comes into power on October 1, 2001. Islamic Fundamentalists groups aligned to the new government go on a rampage. They loot, kill, and drive thousands of Hindus out of their homes. The biggest atrocities are on women - hundreds are raped. The following are just a few incidents...
October 12 - Hindu women are publicly gang-raped in Barisal district. A report in Bengali says, "The barbaric gang-raping of two teenage girls by fundamentalists will shame the entire world and challenge the very existence of civilisation."
October 14 - Fundamentalists go on a rampage on Hindu minorities in Chandshi, Bahadurpur, Barthi, Pingolkati, Ashukati, Agailzara. Again, Hindu women are publicly gang-raped.
October 21 - Indifference of the government results in an increase in cases of rape in Khulna and Barisal regions.
October 22 - Some Bangladeshi newspapers publish photos of young Hindu women who were molested when their homes were attacked by fundamentalists. Hindu women flee to distant villages and towns and to India. Rokeya Kabir, heads womens rights group - Nari Pragati Sangha - says that they have met women who were raped, but will not speak because they fear more attacks.
October 22 - Report of attack on a Hindu woman - Shefali Rani - a village council member in Barisal. Fundamentalists attack and ransack her home on October 2, 2001. They beat her up and then gang-rape her. She flees and seeks refuge in another district.
October 22- Anil Kumar Shil, a farmer, tells reporters that his teenage daughter was gang-raped by a gang of fundamentalists.
October 24 - Two girls - Supama (8 years old) and Sulekha Das (7 years old) are raped in Bhola, Barisal. Their father is forced to watch and is strangled and killed when he tries to help his daughters. Supama dies. Sulekha is still in hospital.
October 28 - Reports of women fleeing to India. 250 entered West Bengal and 370 entered Tripura. The actual numbers are expected to be much higher than the official ones. Intelligence officials in Calcutta believe that Hindu middle class families in Bangladesh have sent 3000-4000 women and girls to West Bengal.
October 28 More rape cases in Barishal district. NDTV, India, reporters spend three hours here and learn of more than 50 cases of rape and loot. Names of women who had been raped are not revealed.
November 16 In Ullapara, Poornima Sarkar, in her early twenties, is raped by fundamentalists.
November 16 "In one night, nearly two hundred women were raped in Char Fashion of Bhola, and amongst them was an eight-year-old girl, a middle-aged amputee, and a seventy-year-old woman," says Daily Star News. "The women were raped in paddy fields, in the bush, on the riverbank...The village was sprinkled with the bodies of molested women, numb with pain and shock in the aftermath of nightlong abuse."
This is the tip of the iceberg. Many Hindu women who were raped refuse to reveal their identities for fear of inviting more attacks from fundamentalists...
The persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh is nothing new; indeed millions of Hindus were massacred in the fight for Bangladeshi Independence. It is ironic how a community which has sacrificed so much for their country is now the target of this, seemingly government sponsored, rampage.
Let your voice be heard, speak out against religious oppression and the destruction of Hindu Society. Join us on Saturday 15 December 2001 at 12pm outside the Bangladesh High Commission, 28 Queens Gate, South Kensington, London. Nearest tube: South Kensington and Gloucester Road (both on Piccadilly Line).
We thank you for your support. Published by Hindu Human Rights
