----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Jamal Hasan
To:
Sent: Saturday, June 8, 2013 6:01 AM
Subject: VERY IMPORTANT: Bangladesh's Hefazat-ie-Islam's lobbyung at UK's House of Lords
From: Jamal Hasan
To:
Sent: Saturday, June 8, 2013 6:01 AM
Subject: VERY IMPORTANT: Bangladesh's Hefazat-ie-Islam's lobbyung at UK's House of Lords
This is Bangladeshi militant Islamist party Hefajat-e-Islami's propaganda message. Please share with everyone who has the need to know about this propaganda war from Bangladeshi jihadists, including Bangladeshi diplomats and security analysts.
- Jamal Hasan from a Middle Eastern country.
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2013 10:07:20 +0300
Subject: Bangladesh: 6th May Massacre on Hefazat Gathering raised at the House of Lords
From: sikkiri@gmail.com
To:
Subject: Bangladesh: 6th May Massacre on Hefazat Gathering raised at the House of Lords
From: sikkiri@gmail.com
To:
Fsbrom: Hefajat-e-Islam Foreign Affairs <foreignaffairs@hefajate-islam.org>
Date: Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 7:35 PM
Subject: Bangladesh | 6th May Massacre raised at House of Lords
To: Hefajat-e-Islam Foreign Affairs <foreignaffairs@hefajate-islam.org>
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldhansrd/text/130515-0003.htm
Subject: Bangladesh | 6th May Massacre raised at House of Lords
To: Hefajat-e-Islam Foreign Affairs <foreignaffairs@hefajate-islam.org>
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldhansrd/text/130515-0003.htm
Lords Hansard text for 15 May 201315 May 2013
Lord Husain: Bangladesh is generally known as a progressive, multi-party democracy and a growing economy in south-east Asia. It has strong political and economic ties with the United Kingdom. Our bilateral trade has steadily grown over the years, largely in favour of Bangladesh. Bangladesh also receives £250 million in aid from the United Kingdom every year—at least until 2015. In the past few years, reports of corruption, torture, extrajudicial killings and the sudden disappearance of journalists and political activists from opposition parties have risen significantly. It is over a year now since Mr Ilias Ali, one of the prominent leaders of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was kidnapped along with his driver. He has not been found since. I had the opportunity of meeting Mr Ali on his visit to the United Kingdom a few months before he was kidnapped. He is one out of thousands of such victims considered by many to have been abducted by government agencies and who have not been seen since—some have been found dead.
According to Human Rights Watch's World Report 2013, the overall human rights situation in Bangladesh has worsened in 2012,
"as the government narrowed political and civil society space, continued to shield abusive security forces from accountability, and flatly ignored calls by Human Rights Watch to reform laws and procedures in flawed war crimes and mutiny trials".
In February 2013, the United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Gabriela Knaul, and the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns, expressed concern at aspects of non-compliance with fair trial and due process reported
during proceedings before Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal, including the pronouncement of death sentences.
Another deadly fire in a Bangladeshi garments factory this time killed over 1,200 people—one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history. The disaster has created worldwide concern for the factory workers who provide, through their sweat and blood, cheap clothes for the developed world. However, before all the victims of the factory collapse were buried, another human tragedy visited Bangladesh with the killings of unknown numbers of opposition protestors by the Government in the early hours of 6 May. This was after a massive anti-government rally. The exact number of casualties in the darkness of the night is still unknown, but the Asian Human Rights Commission calls it "a massacre of demonstrators". In the absence of any reliable information, the Economist states that what happened in Dakar and beyond in the early hours of 6 May looks like a massacre. Bangladesh police say that 22 people died, but the Opposition claim that the figure could be as high as 2,000.
Bangladesh has been known as a land of religious moderation and the Bangladeshi diaspora are generally recognised as such. About half a million British Bangladeshis in the UK are troubled by the recent events in Bangladesh. On behalf of many of them, I ask the Minister to urge the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to use its good offices to ascertain the truth behind the 6 May massacre in Dakar. The world's microfinance guru and practitioner Professor Muhammad Yunus commented on the state of Bangladesh:
"The collapse of the building is just a precursor to the imminent collapse of all our state institutions. If we don't face up to the cracks in our state systems, then we as a nation will get lost in the debris of the collapse ... We will have to find ways to fix the institutions to protect them from complete collapse".
The situation in Bangladesh is showing all signs of anarchy and civil war that could derail democracy and drag the country back into the dark ages. It is time for the influential friendly countries such as the United Kingdom to help Bangladesh to bring back peace, tolerance and reconciliation to the country. I ask the Minister to ask the Foreign Secretary to raise those issues with his counterpart or indeed with the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, at the earliest opportunity.
Contact Person:
MD Aziz Islamabadi
Organizing Secretary
Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh
Foreignaffairs@hefajate-islam.org__._,_.___
