Bangladesh failed to protect ethnic minorities: Sultana Kamal

[Black_cats]

Bangladesh failed to protect ethnic minorities

Bangladesh’s minorities are leaving as central government fails to protect them.

https://asianews.network/2019/08/28/bangladesh-failed-to-protect-ethnic-minorities/

Written by Daily Star

Updated: August 28, 2019

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Ethnic minority communities in Bangladesh are being forced to leave the country as the state has failed to ensure their protection, eminent rights activist Sultana Kamal said yesterday.

The country has been liberated through the Liberation War in 1971 to ensure equal rights for all, but it has sadly moved away from that path, she said.

“Now, we have reached a position where we are trying to push a particular group of people [minority communities] in the country into a status of denial, constitutionally and by all means,” added Sultana.

She made the remarks at a seminar titled “Ethnic Minorities’ Rights to Land and Language” held in the auditorium of Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP) in Dhaka, on the occasion of “International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples” — observed on August 9.

The national committee to observe the day — comprising 17 non-government organisations, including Bangladesh Adivasi Forum, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), Kapaeeng Foundation and Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD) — organised the event.

Sultana, also the co-chair of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Commission, said the population of minority communities was reducing gradually for various political, social and economic reasons, which implicates a consequence of the denial.

The authorities concerned have not been found to be taking any preventive measures while the number of these people are lessening in a planned manner, she alleged.

“…We can now say that a process is going on to drive a group of people away from the country. The process is being carried out willingly by the state and also others who are being favoured directly or indirectly by the state,” said Sultana.

If it was otherwise, the country would run following the spirit of the Liberation War, she added.

Other speakers at the seminar stressed on the need of ensuring ethnic groups’ rights to land and language. They also urged the government to take necessary steps in this regard.

Justice Nizamul Huq, a former judge of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court, said the government should ensure that all children get education in their mother language at least in the primary level.

Speaking on the use of the word “Adibashi”, noted lawyer Jyotirmoy Barua at the seminar said there is no legal barrier to use the word “Adibashi” anywhere in the country.

“None of the existing laws has forbidden the use of the word ‘Adibashi’. Even, the country’s constitution does not say that the word cannot be used,” he said.

Khushi Kabir, prominent rights activist and coordinator of Nijera Kori; Advocate Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu-Bouddha-Christian Oikya Parishad; Robaet Ferdous, a professor at Dhaka University; Shamsul Huda, executive director of ALRD; and Sanjeeb Drong, general secretary of Bangladesh Adivasi Forum; also spoke at the programme.

 

[VikingRaider]

Yes sure, and she said in a talk show with a deobandi maulana ( during lady justice drama) that if there shall be no statue, then there shall be no Masjid in Bangladesh too. ( Imran H Sarkar and another AL Mp/minister was in the same talk show too! )

Sultana Kamal is extreme and front line chetona wh.ore ( anti Pakistan cult), who's mother Sufia Kamal was a great sycophant of Jinnah , who used to write sycophantic poetry related to Jinnah!

Both are politically correct! Both actions are demand of their time, both are economically beneficial! It's call opportunitism!

 

[Abu Shaleh Rumi]

We are poor country. So, there shouldn't be any surprise...

 

[namefield_empty]

List of ethnic tribal minorities being persecuted in Shonardesh-- Chakmas, Marmas, Hajongs, Twipras, Garos, Khasis, Santhals, Bishnupriya Manipuris. All of this to impose their Bengali culture and language on the tribals, a concerted effort to undermine their very existence. No wonder then that the Bongal miyas are looked down upon in my part of the country.

 

[24 Hours]

List of ethnic tribal minorities being persecuted in Shonardesh-- Chakmas, Marmas, Hajongs, Twipras, Garos, Khasis, Santhals, Bishnupriya Manipuris. All of this to impose their Bengali culture and language on the tribals, a concerted effort to undermine their very existence. No wonder then that the Bongal miyas are looked down upon in my part of the country.

I won't deny the minorities have faced problems but dealing racism with more racism isn't justified.

 

[Bilal9]

There are certain types of youngsters in the seventies/eighties in Bangladesh who were probably abused by homo mollahs.

These kids are now lifelong anti-Muslim chetonabadis. Some males like this now teach dancing to girls and have turned full-time flaming eye-liner wearing gay!

I have seen quite a few folks like this and it makes me sad for these people - a life gone to waste in extremism.

Yes being a chetonabadi and anti-Muslim is also a form of extremism. Being born in a Muslim family and then going berserk on holi-time, fancying dhoties and Uttariya (latest trend), there is something wrong with this type of Bangladeshi person.

Wearing Hindu baisakhi saris, putting on sindoor and dots on the forehead the size of a tennis ball, all strange Bangladeshi affectations of a particular sycophant Hindu-culture loving crowd. Odd to say the least.

I don't see Kolkata Hindus going crazy during Qurbani Eid.....

Grow a god-damned backbone, Chetonabadis. Learn to love your own culture....

 

[dray / Rain Man]

Rather, Bangladesh willingly failed to protect ethnic minorities.

 

[Bilal9]

Tell these Sanghi cockroaches to scurry back to their own India section, they are smelling up this place. Filthy vermin pests - they get everywhere.

And while on you way back, vermins, read the following on minority treatment in your 'Endeya'.

Inside the Indian village where a mob killed a man for eating beef

In Bishara, near Delhi, fear and tension are both on the rise as India’s nationalist right and its Muslim minority live uneasily together


Jason Burke


A bruised Asgari Begum, mother of Muslim farmer Mohammed Akhlaq, who was killed by a Hindu mob, stands by the entrance of her home on Friday. Photograph: Manish Swarup/AP
The minister has arrived. The motorcade fills the unpaved street. Policemen who were slumbering in the early autumn midday heat stir, straighten, then spring into action, clearing the way with their canes for this most important visitor. Mahesh Sharma, India’s minister of culture, is preceded by a small aide in a purple shirt and followed by a large grey-suited bodyguard.

Sharma has come to “condole” the family of Mohammed Akhlaq, a 50-year-old labourer beaten to death by a mob in his small two-storey home in the centre of Bishara village, about an hour’s drive beyond the outskirts of Delhi, India’s capital, last Monday night.

The mob that killed him believed that Akhlaq and his family, who are Muslim, had eaten meat from a cow, an animal considered sacred by the 80% of the Indian population who follow the Hindu faith. Akhlaq and his son were dragged from their beds and beaten with bricks. The father died; the son is fighting for his life in hospital.

Sharma is the local member of parliament as well as a minister. “It was important for me to come. I am the democratic representative,” the 56-year-old former doctor told the Observer. Outside, a media scrum filled the courtyard of the Akhlaqs’ home.

Sharma’s visit is more important than a simple courtesy to his constituents. His Bharatiya Janata party, Hindu nationalists, stormed to power in a landslide victory in May 2014, unceremoniously dispatching Congress, which had ruled India for most of its 68 years as an independent country, to the political margins.

The BJP is led by Narendra Modi, whose appeal is based on his promise to bring economic development and opportunity without sacrificing India’s cultural identity. Exactly what this means has been fiercely debated since Modi’s victory.

Critics of the prime minister, who last month visited the US and received a warm welcome from President Barack Obama and Silicon Valley’s top executives, say that since Modi took power rightwing groups have felt empowered. They point to a series of incidents – including mass conversions, attacks on lorries transporting cows and acts of violence against members of India’s religious minorities – as evidence of a newly tense atmosphere. Political opponents allege, too, that there has been limited condemnation from senior officials. “The silence at the top ... is absolutely stunning,” Abhishek Singhvi, a Congress MP, told reporters following the murder in Bishara.

Sharma has been at the centre of the increasingly bitter debate. Like many senior members of the BJP government, including Modi, he has spent decades in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a conservative revivalist Hindu organisation that is a powerful political and cultural force.

In an interview last month, Sharma said India should be “cleansed” of “polluting” western influences so as to restore “Indian culture”.

The debate has also raised questions about the position of India’s many religious minorities. A suggestion by India’s foreign minister last year that the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu epic, be made the “national book” provoked an outcry from Muslims and Christians, 14% and 2.3% of the population of 1.35 billion respectively.

Sharma prompted anger when he said that APJ Abdul Kalam, the scientist who oversaw India’s nuclear programme, was a “great man and nationalist, despite being Muslim”, and that the Qur’an and the Bible were not “central to Indian culture”.

In Bishara on Friday, Sharma refused to discuss his recent statements and was keen to strike a more conciliatory note. “Our values are to live together under the law and in respect of the constitution,” he said. “This sad affair [the murder of Akhlaq] … happened in the heat of the moment. It was the result of a misunderstanding.”

The route from central Delhi to Bishara passes first over the heavily polluted Yamuna river, past a vast new temple and a metro station and on to a recently built expressway slicing through the city’s sprawl. Beyond the huge developments of half-built apartment buildings, the road narrows, ending in a zone of scruffy townships. Bishara, a huddle of hundred or so breeze-block cement and brick homes with intermittent electricity and patchy sanitation, lies among fields that stretch to the horizon.

The events that led to Mohammed Akhlaq’s death are fairly clear. Last weekend the remains of a calf were found outside Bishara. On Monday night someone used the village temple’s loudspeakers to broadcast the allegation that its meat had been eaten.


“I think someone saw a Muslim lady carrying meat in a bag. No one is sure. Anyway, about a thousand people heard the announcement and went to the home [of the Akhlaqs],” said Deerat Singh, whose two sons have been arrested for the attack. “They saw a trail of blood on the ground. Then 60 or 70 people entered the house and pulled him from his bed and beat him to death.”

In most of India, most of the time, killing cows is illegal, but possessing or eating beef is not. A sample of meat found in the Akhlaq’s home has been sent for forensic examination, said local magistrate Rajesh Kumar Yadav, the bureaucrat with responsibility for Bishara. “The investigation is going on. The police is there, covering all angles and dangers. Relations in the village are being normalised and everybody is doing a great effort for this,” said Yadav.

Yet deep tensions and fear remain. When Sharma gathered the villagers in the yard of the temple and called for communal harmony and mutual respect, the reaction was respectful but quietly hostile.

“We handed over our children to the police. But, minister sir, that does not mean you can play with our feelings. We know it was beef that was eaten,” said Jagdish Sisodia, a village elder.

Satish Singh, an activist with a Hindu spiritual foundation who had travelled from Delhi to “show solidarity”, said: “All Hindus are deploring this sad incident. Everyone agrees it should not have happened. But this is a very sensitive matter. For Hindus the murder of a man is not so sensitive as the murder of a cow. We treat the cow as our mother,” he said.

Muslim groups had also been drawn to the village. “If this heinous crime can be done in a democratic system, what is the meaning of democracy?,” asked Hilal Madni, a 39-year-old auditor who had travelled with 60 others from Delhi to “calm the terror in the minds” of the 27 Muslim families in Bishara.

Preceding Sharma by just minutes was Asaduddin Owaisi, a controversial Muslim politician from the south of India. “It is important to be here because of the overall atmosphere created against the Muslims in this country, whether it is allegations of slaughtering cows or being terrorists or we have too many children,” Owaisi said. “What happened in Bishara was not an accident. It was a religious murder.”

Sitting on a narrow, worn rope bed in a corner of the Akhlaqs’ home was Hanif, a brother of the dead man. Like Mohammed, he too was a labourer and described a life of working 14-hour days in often blinding heat for less than 200 rupees (£2) a day.


“All the labourers around here are Muslims. We have no land. We have been here for a hundred years or more but we haven’t had any trouble with our neighbours,” he said.

One reason was that no one ever complained. Bishara and surrounding villages are dominated by Hindus from the land-owning Thakur caste, in the middle range of the tenacious Indian social hierarchy. The Muslims worked their fields.

“Mohammed was a quiet man. Like most of us, he just worked and kept quiet. There are 60 Thakur villages round here, so they can pretty much do what they want and get away with it. Today it was my brother. Tomorrow it could be anyone,” Hanif said.

 

[Leishangthem]

List of ethnic tribal minorities being persecuted in Shonardesh-- Chakmas, Marmas, Hajongs, Twipras, Garos, Khasis, Santhals, Bishnupriya Manipuris. All of this to impose their Bengali culture and language on the tribals, a concerted effort to undermine their very existence. No wonder then that the Bongal miyas are looked down upon in my part of the country.

Stop addressing the bengali of bangladesh as Bishnupriya manipuri! Bishnupriya isn't manipuri .

Lingistic survey of India(1904) volume iii part iii page 40 - " There is a degraded class of KALICHA OR BISHNUPRIYA which consists of ..Bengali of low caste, they speak a language different from that of true manipuri but in fact closely allied to vulgar bengali".

 

[namefield_empty]

Stop addressing the bengali of bangladesh as Bishnupriya manipuri! Bishnupriya isn't manipuri .

Lots of Manipuris i know in Assam and Manipur have a different take on the subject, but let's not go there for now. Fact of the matter is they are indigenous to our NE, sons of the soil, a thing that can't be ascribed to the Bongal miyas infestating our state. Furthermore, your duplicity is highlighted when you accept the Pangals as Manipuris..

https://m.telegraphindia.com/states/north-east/manipuri-stays-with-bishnupriya/cid/815356

Manipuri' stays with Bishnupriya

In a landmark judgment yesterday, the Supreme Court has recognised Bishnupriya Manipuri language as a separate entity in the family of Indo-Aryan languages.

A two-bench division of the apex court, comprising Justice Ruma Paul and Justice Dalbir Bhandari, also made it clear that there was nothing wrong if Bishnupriyas continued to use the term ‘Manipuri’ either as a prefix or a suffix to the nomenclature of the Bishnupriyas.......

 

[Leishangthem]

Lots of Manipuris i know in Assam and Manipur have a different take on the subject, but let's not go there for now. Fact of the matter is they are indigenous to our NE, sons of the soil, a thing that can't be ascribed to the Bongal miyas infestating our state. Furthermore, your duplicity is highlighted when you accept the Pangals as Manipuris..

https://m.telegraphindia.com/states/north-east/manipuri-stays-with-bishnupriya/cid/815356

Manipuri' stays with Bishnupriya

In a landmark judgment yesterday, the Supreme Court has recognised Bishnupriya Manipuri language as a separate entity in the family of Indo-Aryan languages.

A two-bench division of the apex court, comprising Justice Ruma Paul and Justice Dalbir Bhandari, also made it clear that there was nothing wrong if Bishnupriyas continued to use the term ‘Manipuri’ either as a prefix or a suffix to the nomenclature of the Bishnupriyas.......

Do you even know what the fk indigenous even mean?
Idk about other parts but bishnupriya bengali kalicha are fkn war captives are definitely not indigenous of Manipur;which remains fact. They are 100% from bangladeshi bengali origin.

Those are shameless culture vulture with no sense of shame or dignity trying to benifit off meetei privileges.

Only the resident degenerate folks herein would blindly trust the competence and righteousness of Indian courts helmed by corrupt and incompetent personnel with an inherent bias toward their bangla and hinduism agenda.
The bishnupriya claims don't make any sense and don't have any unrefutable proof of their claim.

Btw ,just saying ,there wouldn't be a single meetei/naga/kuki of manipur that considers pangal as indigenous.