Bangladesh Needs To Be Held Accountable For Violence Against Hindus

A Durga Puja celebration in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2013. Creative Commons photo.

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(OPINION) This year the peaceful celebration of Durga Puja that is so cherished by Hindus in Bangladesh was fraught with violence against Hindus and their places of worship.

The impetus of this violence was far more trivial than one might expect. A perceived slight against Islam was enough for some in the Bangladeshi Muslim community to punish and terrorize Hindus.

What was it that brought this torrent of violence on an entire community?

A Facebook post.

In it, a picture showed the “murti,” or sacred image, of the Hindu diety Hanuman sitting with the Quran in his lap. Putting something in Hanuman's lap would have been a sign of deep respect and reverence for the Quran — if it was done by a Hindu. But news reports later showed that it was placed there by a Muslim man, Iqbal Hossain. He also stole Hanuman’s club — a clear attempt to insult Hindus.

Fundamentalist Muslims who saw the Facebook post — and by some accounts, a Facebook live video by a police officer — began desecrating and destroying “mandirs” (Hindu temples), “mandaps” (worship altars), and murtis in the city of Comilla, where the incident took place.

Mob violence then spread across the country as shops and homes owned by Hindus were looted and vandalized.

The official death toll — per the Bangladeshi government and as quoted exclusively in Western media — listed two Hindus killed by mobs and five Muslims killed by police attempting to quell further mob violence.

Local Hindu sources, however, gave a more detailed account of the violence with a death toll far higher than the official story.

The Bangladeshi Chapter of the World Hindu Federation tallied, as of ten days after the attacks began, 14 Hindus killed, 26 women and girls raped — including a 10-year-old girl who died of her injuries after being gang raped — 343 Hindu temples vandalized and 1,650 Hindu homes attacked. A Buddhist monastery was also targeted by the mobs and set on fire. Hindus make up only 9% of Bangladesh’s 165 million people, while Buddhists form less than 1%.

Social media also had a role to play in the government persecution of Hindu activists in the face of this violence. The Rapid Action Battalion, an elite paramilitary crime-fighting unit in Bangladesh, arrested at least one Hindu for “destroying communal harmony” by sharing photos and videos of the violence on social media and wanting the government to take action. RAB has been accused of severe human rights violations and extrajudicial killings in the past.

Media reports have stated that the internet was shut down in Dhaka, but informants on the ground said they lost access to 4G service and only had 2G service in other parts of the country. The Bangladeshi government has described this as a security measure, but in light of the loud media silence in the face of this violence, perhaps there was an ulterior motive.

Self-censorship and government censorship of media outlets is pervasive throughout the country, and honest reports on the depth, breadth and details of the violence are few and far between.

The Bangladeshi people were still able to call out for help, however. Their cries for help on social media were heard across the world. Thousands of photos and videos of the violence were shared, and the international Hindu community looked on in horror as the government of Bangladesh did nothing to stop it.

In light of the numerous injustices — spreading of misinformation, inciting violence, radicalization of the general public and persecution of victims — enabled by social media, Twitter suspended the accounts of Hindus who were sharing the details of the violence taking place, including the Hindu religious organization the International Society of Krishna Consciousness.

The use of social media to simultaneously foment religious extremism and then mute the voices of the many victims is appalling. The information age has not changed the way that religious extremism operates — it has just amplified it. Spreading disinformation and radicalization and erasing the violence inflicted upon victims is par for the course of religious extremism online.

The Bangladeshi government has participated in the gambit of religious extremism through laws such as the Digital Security Act of 2018. The act makes it illegal to, among other things, offend religious sentiments through “publication, broadcast, etc. of information in website or in any electronic format.” If you are found guilty of doing this, it can land you in prison for at least 10 years.

This law is enforced liberally throughout the country to squelch freedom of expression, including dissent toward the government, and to silence religious minority leaders and activism by the Hindu community. The reality of how very easy it is to misattribute social media posts to an individual or community has not disabused the government of the notion that the Digital Security Act is anything but another step toward authoritarianism.

Amnesty International has called the law ”draconian,” and Human Rights Watch has called it ”abusive.” The UN has documented the unjust application of the law and the ways in which it has led to mob violence.

Despite the ways in which the Digital Security Act enabled the mob justice that hurt so many and the government inaction that led to so many deaths, the reigning Awami League government has come away from these past few weeks scot-free.

The international interfaith community needs to step up and put pressure on the government of Bangladesh to do better. Without that pressure, it will continue to get a free pass for fostering religious extremism in its country and throughout the region.

Deepali Kulkarni is the director of human rights at the Hindu American Foundation. She holds master’s degrees in asian religion from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, women’s studies from the University of Oxford, and religion from Syracuse University.