| Delegates of the Unity Council, USA with the officials of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on March 13, 2013. Press Release: On March 13, 2013, an eight-member delegation of Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist & Christian Unity Council, USA went to Washington, D.C. to hold meetings with the officials of the U. S. Department of State, U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Congressional (tom Lantos) Human Rights Commission and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) and presented documents and evidences of attacks on religious minorities, perpetrated by the Islamic nationalists and Islamic extremists groups of Jamaat-E- Islami, Islamic Chhatra Shibeer and BNP. Delegation made US officials aware of the vicious propaganda campaign launched by the BNP and Jamat cadres against the peaceful demonstrators of Shahbag Square, who are demanding proper punishment for crimes against humanity during the independence war in 1971, and also emphasized on the recent attacks on the law and order enforcement agents. Handed over documentations of the on-going atrocities as well as those of the pogroms conducted in Hathazarihat and Ramu in 2012, and throughout the country between 2001 and 2006 as well as those of 1992 (Logan Massacre) and 1971, which caused 15 million minorities to flee to India since 1971, and one million since 2001. The delegates emphasized the need for pressure from the donor nations, without which minorities of Bangladesh will be wiped out much like the religious minorities of Pakistan. The delegates compared the fascist character of BNP with the Nazis, and the Jamaat-E- Islami and its violent student wing as the Gestapo and the SS forces. The claims were substantiated by documentary evidence published in the International journals including CNN report, in which Johan Walker Lindh, an American Taliban, reported that there was a Bengali speaking Brigade in Afghanistan, which fought for Mollah Omar alongside Al-Qaeda led by Oslma Bin Laden. (http://articles.cnn.com/2001-12-20/world/ret.walker.transcript_1_robert-young pelton-american-taliban-fighter-john-walker?_s=PM:asiapcf. Transcript of John Walker interview, Afghanistan. December 20, 2001.) For the protection of the minorities, the delegates suggested that US should (i) ask Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to deploy security forces to protect the lives and properties and the places of worship of the minorities; (ii) immediately start prosecuting the perpetrators of crime against humanity during 2001 and 2006 (as has been identified by the Judiciary Probe Commission) as well as in recent weeks by enacting a Hate Crime & Speech law; and (iii) ask Begum Zia to tell her own cadres as well as her partner Jamaat-E-Islami and its violent student wing Islamic Chhatra Shibeer to stop violence against the country's religious minorities. Finally, the delegates warned the D.C. officials that if the community of civilized nations failed to protect the tolerant or moderate Muslims and the minorities of Bangladesh then the country would soon become another Pakistan or Afghanistan of the 1990s, requiring the U. S. as well as other democratic nations to directly intervene to protect secular democracy in Bangladesh. Sent by: Dwijen Bhattacharjya, Ph. D. , General Secretary |
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