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DATE: December
10, 2004
The Hindu American Foundation
(HAF), a human rights group promoting understanding, tolerance,
and pluralism, calls for the world community to recognize
the rights of Hindus worldwide and condemns the human rights
violations against Hindus worldwide on Human Rights Day (December
10, 2004).
HAF condemns the ongoing,
state-supported oppression and victimization of the Hindu
minority in Bangladesh. HAF urges the Bangladesh government
to bring an end to the half-century long genocide and ethnic
cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus. In addition, HAF calls for
the international community, especially the Indian government
and established human rights groups to secure the rights of
minority groups, including the rights of Christians, Sikhs,
Zoroastrians, and Buddhists in Bangladesh.
HAF notes that the Hindu
population there has declined from 31 percent in 1947 at the
time of Partition to about 14 percent after East Pakistan
separated from Pakistan in 1971 to become the independent
Bangladesh. The Hindu population in Bangladesh is now estimated
at 9 percent. Millions of Hindus have perished in Bangladesh,
and millions more have migrated to India as refugees. During
the recent (2001) national elections those communities where
Hindus voted in large numbers were targeted by the victorious
Bangladesh Nationalist Party workers and Jamaat-e-Islami militants
who indulged in rape, murder, arson and kidnappings, and forced
the exodus of thousands of Hindus.
HAF also notes the ongoing
ethnic-cleansing of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists, and
the selected targeting of pro-India Muslims in the Indian
state of Jammu & Kashmir by Pakistan supported Islamist
terrorist groups. Over 300,000 Hindus from Kashmir are refugees
within India. Over 60,000 people have been killed in this
decade-long violence supported and sometimes orchestrated
by Pakistan. This year alone, there were many terrorist incidents
in which the majority of victims were Hindu: in the worst
such incident in May, 29 people were killed when a convoy
carrying soldiers and their families were attacked; in June
more than 20 people were seriously injured in a grenade attack
on a market, and four people were killed and 18 injured in
a bomb attack on a restaurant; and in October two temples
were attacked in which a young girl was seriously injured.
HAF further takes note of
the role of the Pakistani state and Islamist groups based
in Pakistan in the genocide of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan,
and ongoing human rights abuses against them, Christians,
and Ahmadiyyas. Since the partition of India in 1947 into
two nations -- the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the secular
state of India -- the Hindu population in Pakistan (former
West Pakistan) has declined from about 20 percent to less
than 2 percent today.
Ironically, as the
largest pluralist religious and spiritual community worldwide,
Hindus are susceptible to human rights abuses from fundamentalists
belonging to non-pluralist faiths. HAF will continue to monitor
and address human rights abuses against the Hindu minorities
in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir.
HAF’s Policy Briefings on Terrorism
in Jammu & Kashmir, and Hindu Human Rights in Bangladesh
& Pakistan, first presented
to members of the United States Congress in May 2004, may
be found on our
website.
For further information:
please contact HAF.
HAF is a non-profit, tax-exempt
501(c)(3) organization not aligned or affiliated with any
political entity, party or organization.
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