A whole lot of individuals marched in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday to demand safety for Hindus and different minorities who say they’ve suffered violence and threats because the ouster of autocratic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Hasina’s overthrow in August in a student-led rebellion sparked a sequence of reprisals towards Hindus, who have been seen as disproportionate supporters of her regime.
The interim authorities that changed her, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, acknowledged and condemned the assaults on Hindus, however stated they have been in lots of instances motivated by politics slightly than faith.
Periodic protests within the months since declare that the assaults are persevering with and have demanded motion by the Yunus administration, an “advisory council” tasked with implementing democratic reforms and organizing new elections.
“It’s deeply regrettable that the advisory council doesn’t acknowledge the sufferings that minorities have endured,” Hindu civic chief Charu Chandra Das Brahmachari informed AFP.
“I’ve witnessed the atrocities dedicated towards them: their temples, their companies and their properties.”
Protest organizers have urged the interim authorities to introduce a legislation to guard minorities and demand a minimal proportion of minority illustration in authorities, amongst different calls for.
Tensions have been stoked by the submitting of sedition prices this week towards 19 individuals who took half in an earlier minority rights demonstration within the port metropolis of Chittagong.
The group was accused of disrespecting the nationwide flag of Bangladesh by hoisting a saffron flag over it.
“Framing our leaders with false prices, resembling sedition, has made us skeptical in regards to the authorities’s intentions,” protest member Chiranjan Goswami informed AFP.
Hindus are the most important non secular minority in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, making up about 8 % of the inhabitants.
Assaults on Sufi shrines have additionally been reported, and suspicion falls on Islamists in search of to curb different expressions of the Muslim religion.
Saturday’s rally got here a day after 10,000 individuals attended the same rally in Chittagong.
Minority leaders have pledged to carry extra protests within the coming weeks.
Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighboring India in August as protesters flooded the streets of Dhaka in a dramatic finish to her iron-fisted rule.
His authorities was accused of widespread human rights abuses, together with the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of his political opponents throughout his 15 years in workplace.
