In recent days, the humanitarian situation has been deteriorating in Bangladesh. Opposition leader Mithun Chowdhury, who is an outspoken proponent of minority rights and who heads the Bangladesh Janata Party, was arrested and is confirmed to still be in custody. This is a major blow to all of the minority communities in Bangladesh, who saw him as their main hope for the country’s minorities in obtaining justice for the crimes committed against them. By arresting him, the Bangladeshi government destroyed the political voice for the country’s minorities.
Chowdhury was an outspoken opponent against all of the rapes, murders and other human rights violations committed against Bangladesh’s minorities on a daily basis. One particularly gruesome example of these human rights violations occurred in early November of this year, when over 30 Hindu homes were set on fire in Rangapur’s Thakurbari as the Bangladeshi government stood by and watched.
The attack upon over 30 Hindu homes was blamed upon Titu Roy, a Hindu boy who is now in Bangladeshi custody for writing an anti-Islam post on Facebook. However, sources inside Bangladesh stressed that Roy never wrote such a post and that someone else utilized his name in order to write the Facebook post. This reality did not help Roy to obtain his freedom. According to the National Human Rights Commission, the main motive for the attack was to grab Hindu lands and it had nothing to do with a facebook post published by Roy.
Meanwhile, Hindu temples are destroyed and Hindu temple lands are seized on a daily basis within Bangladesh. A Hindu temple was destroyed recently in Chittagong. There have also been communal riots targeting minorities in the Goplaganj, Chittagong, and Sunamganj districts. But instead of owning up and taking responsibility for the persecution of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi Home Minister prefers to blame the Mossad for destabilizing his country.
Bangladeshi Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal proclaimed: “The Mossad is putting desperate efforts into Bangladesh. They are supporting militancy to confuse us. But the Bengali Muslim community cannot be befuddled. Under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina, the Olama and Mashayekhs [religious scholars] of the country have already proved that there is no room for militancy in the country.”
This statement made by the Bangladeshi Home Minister comes after Israeli Druze diplomat Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy and Public Relations, represented the Hindu minority in Bangladesh, which is presently suffering from ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Bangladeshi government and radical Islamist groups, at a UN Council dealing with minority rights in Geneva. This conference is set to issue a joint position paper on the persecution of minorities around the world. In addition to representing the Hindus in Bangladesh, Safadi also represented the Druze minority in the Middle East and the Kurdish people, who are seeking to establish an independent state.
Before the UN Council met and in the period leading up to over 30 Hindu homes being set on fire in Bangladesh, the Diganta Barta 24 news website in Bangladesh spread similar conspiracy theories that have an uncanny resemblance to what the Bangladeshi Home Minister stated, stressing: “Israel is conspiring to destroy the independence of Bangladesh! They are dreaming to divide this country into a separate state with minorities. Meanwhile, Mossad agent Mendi Safadi has spread his conspiracy far and wide. Mendi started to work with extremist Hindus and tribes living in Bangladesh long ago. Already sitting in India, the Hindu leaders of the country Mithun Chowdhury and many others had a meeting with the Mossad agent Mendi Safadi. On October 12th, they announced that they will not give up on the freedom of minorities in Bangladesh.”
All of these claims put forward by the Bangladeshi Home Minister and the Diganta Barta 24 news website are a far cry from the truth. While Safadi formerly served as Communication Minister Ayoob Kara’s Chief of Staff, he presently is no longer working for him because he established his own center, which seeks to pursue international lobbying on behalf of minority communities across the world. He never was a Mossad agent. His actions do not represent the Israeli government.
Furthermore, the Hindus whom Safadi works with are not extremists and do not seek to secede from Bangladesh. Rather, they wish to obtain human rights and democratic freedoms in Bangladesh. They want to have a political voice in their own country. Their goals differ from the Kurds due to their demographic reality in the country. Nevertheless, like many politicians in the Islamic world, it is much easier to blame the State of Israel for ones problems than to take responsibility for the persecution of the Hindu minority and the Bangladeshi government’s role in encouraging it.