Please send this email to USCIRF. You can send as is or personalize it with your own passion. Copy, then click the “EMAIL USCIRF” button to open your email. Paste the email you just copied, and include your name, title (if applicable), city/state or (if not the US, country); then send. You will have struck a blow for justice and at the same time told these Hindu victims in Bangladesh that they are not alone.
Dear USCIRF Commissioners,
Along with many others, I am both outraged and perplexed at your horrendous decision to give Bangladesh a pass while it continues its deliberate effort to destroy Hinduism in the country and brutalize its Hindu citizens into abandoning their faith, leave the country, or face worse. We are aware of the corporate interests that lobbied you to take this decision. Yet, doing so was your choice, and reflects on the very usefulness of USCIRF, as it gives factors other than religious freedom priory in its decision-making. You had in hand overwhelming evidence of Bangladeshi perfidy but you chose to ignore it; thus, further enabling Bangladesh to continue brutalizing Hindus and other minorities, confident that it can do so with impunity.
Given Bangladesh’s atrocious record of suppressing the right to religious freedom for Hindus and other religious minorities, including non-conforming Muslims; it is difficult to justify Bangladesh being the only country of the former British India not to be designated as such. Bangladesh’s victims face government sponsored and government complicit attacks unknown among religious minorities in neighboring India, which has been a CPC for some time. Rural Hindus especially can’t observe their most important holiday, Durga Puja, because of attacks and intimidation that are never stopped or prosecuted by the government.
Religious freedom violations in Bangladesh meet USCIRF’s standards for a CPC.
They are egregious and include murder, rape and gang rape, child abduction, forced conversion, religious desecration, and large-scale pogroms. They are designed to forcibly convert Hindus, murder them, or drive them out of the country. Governments do not take action to oppose the goal of a Hindu free Bangladesh.
They are systematic in that high government officials direct local police and others in the legal administration not to take action against anti-Hindu attackers; attackers act with the knowledge that their crimes will not be prosecuted; there is a pattern of depriving Hindus of the ability to make a living in Bangladesh—from attacks on businesses to extortion to land seizures without government objection. Many attacks target young Hindu women and children so Hindus cannot replenish their depleted numbers.
They are ongoing, having been a feature of life since Bangladesh’s birth. Hindus have gone from a fifth of the Bangladeshi population at its 1971 birth to one in 15 today. Conditions for religious minorities changed little no matter who ruled. This is especially true today as the ruling Awami League uses its posturing to cover up the dire situation for religious minorities. Even during the COVID lock down, the government enforced pandemic safety measures elsewhere, while allowing frequent anti-Hindu attacks, including documented mob attacks, to go unpunished.
Yet, you have determined that unsubstantiated slurs and non-lethal actions in India are worse. Priorities, USCIRF. Leave your politics at the door.
[Your name and other information]