While New Delhi must fervently hope for the return of the secular, India-friendly Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh, it has to also prepare for the consequences of a BNP victory
October is generally a pleasant month when unpleasant memories tend not to assail one’s mind, particularly if they are of remote events. One, however, needs to revisit them if there is a danger of recurrence on a much more fearful scale. The reference is to the savage communal violence unleashed by supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, now re-christened Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Isami, which cannot contest elections as its registration has been cancelled because its constitution places God above democracy. The violence followed the victory of the four-party alliance, of which they were the main constituents, in the parliamentary elections in Bangladesh held on October 1, 2001.
They had launched savage countrywide violence on Hindus even before the results were announced. According to a report in the Dainik Janakantha of October 11, 2001, “Alliance supporters got into a frenzy of fury even before the elections on October 1. The level of their frenzy began rising on their hearing the news of their victory. Instances of their searching out and attacking the houses of members of the Hindu minority, destroying and looting them and molesting women occurred. There were also instances of rape. Male youths were indiscriminately beaten up indiscriminately.”
A report in the same paper of November 15, that year, stated that the number of women of minority communities raped could exceed 1,000. According to preliminary estimates, information had already been received of 700 cases of rape. Of these 90 per cent were of Hindu women and the rest were from other minorities. Referring to the atrocities-beatings, killings, torching of homes, shaving of heads and sexual violence — an IANS report, carried in The Pioneer of November 27, 2001, quoted an official of the Hindu Buddhist & Christian Unity Council as saying that these had “surpassed all previous records. Cruelty in some cases had overshadowed atrocities [by Pakistani army and the Jamaat and its supporters) in 1971.”
The report cited another in The Daily Star of November 16, which quoted a school teacher in southern Bhola as saying that hundreds of women aged between eight and 70 were raped on the night of October 2, 2001, in Annada Prashad village. That the school teacher was not exaggerating is clear from the statement by Rosaline Costa, Executive Director, Hotline Human Rights Trust, Dhaka, that 98 per cent of the Hindu women she had interviewed in Bhola had been raped.
There was mass destruction of property and looting of homes. The atrocities triggered a huge exodus of Hindus to India. According to a report in The Bangladesh Observer of December 6, 2001, 29,900 Hindus had fled from the districts of Comilla, Chittagong, Natore, Bogura, and Pabna and Jhenaidaha. Thirty three temples have been destroyed in nine districts. Since Bangladesh has 64 districts, one can easily realise that the total number of refugees and of temples destroyed was much higher.
The interim Bangladesh Government under which the parliamentary elections — deeply flawed, according to many — were held, did precious little to stop the violence. So did the four-party coalition Government which came to power with Begum Khaleda Zia as Prime Minister. What finally caused the orgy of slaughter, rape and destruction to abate were relentless protests and opposition by Bangladesh’s large population of secular Muslims, intellectuals, practitioners of the creative arts, and leaders of civil society and women’s organisations who risked their lives to protect the minorities.
The media played a singularly independent and fearless role in bringing to light horrific events in their last gory detail. There was foreign diplomatic intervention. Dainik Ittefaq reported on October 19 that representatives of British, German, Italian, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish missions in Dhaka met the Foreign Minister and expressed their anxiety over the post-election atrocities on the minorities.
According to a report in Bhorer Kagaj of October 12, 2001, a meeting of distinguished citizens, held under the banner of Shachetan Nagarik Samaj (Conscious Citizens Society) at Dhaka’s Shaheed Minar on the previous day demanded the appointment of a strong commission under a judge to probe the nationwide, inhuman atrocities perpetrated on the minorities before and after the election. They had also made clear that the commission’s report had to be acceptable to all. Stating that the atrocities had been perpetrated under the supervision of the caretaker Government, the Speakers said that there seemed no Government in the country at all.
Similar rallies and protest meetings were held throughout Bangladesh. But for these, the pogrom would have assumed genocidal dimensions. And this was at a time when leaders and supporters of the secular and democratic Awami league were themselves under murderous attack. The kind of persecution they braved is clearly illustrated by the case of the internationally acclaimed human rights activist and writer, Mr Sahriar Kabir, who travelled to India to make a documentary film on plight of the Hindu refugees from Bangladesh and the reasons for their fleeing the country. He was arrested immediately after landing in what was then Zia International Airport in Dhaka on November 23, 2001, and subjected to unrelenting interrogation. He was finally released on bail in January, 2002, following an international and nationwide uproar over his arrest.
It is particularly important to recall all this because a much more savage wave of atrocities is likely to be unleashed if the BNP-led alliance comes to power in the parliamentary election in Bangladesh due in roughly three months. Despite the best efforts of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Government, which has taken some very strong steps, there have been repeated attacks on Hindus by cadres of the Jamaat, operating without party label, and organisations like Hefazat-e-Islam.
The victims will also be leaders and supporters of the Awami league and allied parties, secular civil society organisations and those demanding punishment of the war criminals. They also happen to be steadfast friends of India.
This country has grossly betrayed them by reneging on its promise to sign the Teesta waters, and implement the enclaves exchange, accords. It must not let them down again. Besides doing everything it can to help Ms Hasina win, it must also chart out a course of action, perhaps in cooperation with other countries opposed to fundamentalist Islamist terrorism, to be followed if the BNP-led coalition wins and unleashes a murderous wave of violence on the minorities and the secular, democratic elements in Bangladesh.