Denial of justice to persecuted minorities
Where do some of your correspondents and commentators get the idea that the recent attacks on Hindus were a sudden and unusual occurrence in a long history of sweet tolerance? Yes, I know that certain people and communities here practice an excellent tradition of such tolerance, although even they, it seems, can be 'converted' by those who preach 'contamination by presence', using comments from 'sharia' as justification. After partition, some Hindus that had not left immediately were persecuted and, again, after Independence, some that the Pakistanis had spared were finished off by Bangladeshis. (I note with interest, when the collapse of standards in English is discussed, Bangladeshis are strangely silent about this being the result of the exodus of Hindus who were, and are, among the best speakers and teachers of English.) Christians also were murdered then, including some of the Oxford Mission Fathers in Barisal. For myself, I remember a Hindu teacher coming to me, some years ago, the father of a new baby girl, asking for help with a visa to work overseas. “They are raping our daughters.”
In the past, this newspaper reported the persecution of Hindus but without the follow-up of persistent demands for compensation and justice, including the return of property. Four Christians have been murdered while I have been here - with minimal reporting - but I am glad that the first, Hridoy Roy of Sonarchar, in Jamalpur, received justice on February 20th of this year (nearly TEN years after his murder on April 23, 2003!) when the High Court upheld the death penalty on Salahuddin, the leader of the JMB gang involved. This Christian had been showing a video based on Luke's Gospel - LUKE, for heaven's sake! - The version of the story of Jesus that shows his compassion for the poor and marginalised! The ten men who set upon him obviously thought they were doing God a favour. If some white Anglo-Saxon Christians had murdered some white Anglo-Saxon Muslim (if this can be imagined), it would have been headlines across the world - for this was not a murder across racial or national barriers, or with political complications, but 'purely' on religious grounds.
Do the minorities really have to wait 10 years for justice, sir? How long will Bangladeshis shrug off the lie that only Bengali Muslims are 'truly' Bangladeshis, despite the contribution of others to generations of life here - and the Liberation War? How can the authorities behave as though non-Bengalis and non-Muslims do not merit the rights of full citizens and that their persecution is reasonable and justice can be delayed - and therefore denied?
The request reported yesterday for a special tribunal sounds a good idea. What about an Ombudsman with a well-advertised phone number, in addition?
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