The press secretary to the chief adviser, Shafiqul Alam, said that Bangladesh’s minority issues have been unfairly presented in international media and in the top parliamentary hearings of influential countries. He called on secular newspapers and international human rights organizations to investigate the alleged religious violence cases in Bangladesh.
He said this in a statement posted on his verified Facebook account on Saturday (December 7) afternoon. He added that when Netra News published the report on the post-revolutionary attacks on the Hindu community by the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Oikya Parishad, I expected the Oikya Parishad to issue a statement on the matter.
Shafiqul Alam said that Netra News is a leading investigative website that has earned a reputation for reporting on major corruption and human rights violations in Bangladesh.
The press secretary noted that the Netra News report showed that almost all of the nine Hindu deaths that the Minority Parishad reported were linked to political, personal or other reasons, which were not communal violence.
He said, we had hoped that the Oikya Parishad would respond to the Netra News report, as it raised serious questions about the Parishad’s data collection and reporting methods.
He also said that the Oikya Parishad had published another controversial report on attacks on minorities in Bangladesh in July this year. He said that they said that at least 45 minorities (mostly Hindus) were killed in the 2023-24 fiscal year (which began on July 1, 2023). The report was published on the front and back pages of newspapers in Bangladesh. Despite serious questions about the veracity of the Oikya Parishad’s claim, no media outlet has challenged it.
He said that according to the country’s largest human rights organization, Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), no one was killed in anti-minority violence in 2023 and only two people have been killed this year (January to October).
ASK is a secular group, which has been led for years by a convicted Awami League member. Its current chairman is human rights lawyer Z I Khan Panna. Who told local media that he would be interested in defending the mass murderer Sheikh Hasina in the trial?
Shafiqul Alam said the Oikya Parishad reports have far-reaching implications. Recently, a British MP quoted the Oikya Parishad report while talking about attacks on minorities in Bangladesh. He said the report on post-revolution attacks on Hindus has been viewed more than 11 million times on social media.
He added that, to our knowledge, powerful and wealthy Hindu American groups, Indian national and regional newspapers and top Indian analysts have cited the report to highlight the plight of minorities in Bangladesh. Experts say that the Oikya Parishad reports are the biggest source of disinformation about anti-minority violence.
Shafiqul Alam said, violence against minorities occurs in Bangladesh. We are not yet a model country in terms of communal harmony. Religiously offensive Facebook posts also cause violence. Some marginalized groups and individuals often spread hatred against minorities.
He said that in recent weeks, there has been a great effort by the interim government, political, religious and civil society leaders to keep people calm during religious incidents. Some of them have shown remarkable political maturity during these incidents.
However, he claimed that the reports of the Oikay Parishad have systematically exaggerated the incidents of violence against minorities.
The press secretary said that we hope that leading secular and liberal newspapers will conduct their own investigations into the alleged incidents of violence against minorities. We also hope that international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, will conduct similar investigations.
He noted that Human Rights Watch had conducted an excellent investigation into the massacre of Hefazat activists in 2013. I hope they will conduct a similar investigation here. He noted that if the government works to refute these rumors, there may be a skeptical view of its reports.