Vendetta Republic: Minorities, women, justice under siege in Yunus's Bangladesh

India Today

13 hours ago

The brazen rape and public humiliation of a married Hindu woman in Bangladesh's Cumilla region on Thursday night has once again brought into sharp focus how insecure minorities are in the nation. The victim, a mother of two, whose husband works abroad, had gone to visit her parents when a neighbour broke into the house and raped her at knifepoint.As others joined the rapist, a man called Mohammed Fazar Ali, they filmed the act and threatened to kill the woman and circulate the video on social media if she raised an alarm or complained to the police. But neighbours, both Hindus and Muslims, alerted by her cries for help, chased the rapist and his accomplices away.advertisementThe police have already arrested five, including Fazar Ali. But by then, however, a 50-second video of the woman, naked and desperately fighting the rapist, had made it to social media. Hopes of justice are slim as the victim is under pressure to withdraw the case - the accused is a top local leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
This incident came within a few days of a brutal attack on a Hindu barber, Paresh Chandra Shil, in the northern district of Lalmonirhat, by a mob led by a local Imam who alleged he had made blasphemous remarks about Prophet Muhammad. The local police, instead of protecting the victim, helped the Imam by booking 69-year-old Shil for hurting religious sentiments, who insists he made no remarks against the Prophet.And in the same week, authorities demolished a Durga temple in Dhaka's Khilkhet, on the grounds that it had been constructed on land belonging to the Bangladesh Railways. Indian protests against the demolition of the temple sparked strong reactions from the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government.Minorities insecureadvertisementThese incidents do point to a growing sense of acute insecurity amongst religious minorities. After the brutal assassination of Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Committee leader Bhabesh Chandra Roy in April, India had pointed to the 'systematic persecution' of minorities and appealed for a course correction. But Chinmoy Krishna Das, the ISKCON monk who first organised protests by Hindus in Bangladesh, remains in jail, unable to secure bail in the sedition case he's been implicated in. Calls for his release have fallen on deaf ears. Attacks on Buddhists and Hindus in Chittagong Hill Tracts have also multiplied since the interim government took charge last year.But the Yunus administration is in persistent denial, with the chief advisor claiming that those Hindus attacked were victims of popular resentment because they were closely identified with the ousted Awami League. That is a blatant falsehood because neither the Cumilla woman nor Paresh Shil was affiliated with any party.Gendered violenceYunus presides over the most lawless period of contemporary Bangladesh. In the week that saw the brutal rape of the Hindu woman in Cumilla, two other cases of rape were reported from elsewhere in the country.Two men were sent to jail in Mymensingh for raping a 13-year-old girl. Local religious influentials tried to hush up the case by arbitration, but the police moved in after the girl's father filed a case alleging rape. The same week, the director of a local madrassa, Shakhawat Ullah, was arrested for the attempted rape of a 12-year-old girl in the female dormitory of the institution.advertisementCrimes against women seem to be on the rise at a time when Islamist radicals, who strongly back the Yunus regime, have taken to the streets to oppose women's rights. They are calling for trashing a Women's Reform Commission report that recommended equal rights for women in matters of inheritance, divorce, property, and marriage. In a protest rally, Islamist radicals went through the obscene symbolic act of stripping a woman's effigy and beating it with shoes.The radicals say the commission's report goes against 'Islamic values'. Yunus, who set up the commission, has conveniently gone quiet, frustrating activists who headed the commission.Radical clerics have forcibly stopped women from playing football in many parts of the country, upsetting national team players who won the South Asian championship for Bangladesh just a year ago.Since Yunus took charge, Bangladesh has witnessed a frightening rise in 'mob justice'. These mobs, whipped into frenzy by Islamist radicals or Yunus's student-youth brigade, have stormed stores to prevent actresses from inaugurating them or attacked leading personalities associated with the Sheikh Hasina regime. Recently, a mob attacked the residence of former Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda and assaulted (and garlanded) him with shoes. Later, police arrested Huda in a case filed by the BNP over electoral irregularities. The mob got away scot-free.advertisement'Mob justice' was also the demolition of 32, Dhanmondi in Dhaka, the house of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh to independence in 1971. For two days, the army and police stood by as mobs of religious radicals and Yunus's youth brigade pulled down the museum installed in the historic building. One such student leader (now in Yunus's advisory council), Asif Mahmud Bhuiyan, was recently let off at the Dhaka airport after bullet magazines were found in his luggage while he was travelling to Morocco via Turkey. The incident was widely reported in the normally muzzled Bangladesh media.Awami League under attackYunus is desperately trying to undermine the legacy of Mujibur Rahman and the 1971 independence war he spearheaded, as is evident from his government's decision to remove Rahman's picture from all currency notes. Replacing them with new currency has cost Bangladesh billions, but Yunus seems unfazed.advertisementMore than 100 former ministers and senior leaders of the Awami League and tens of thousands of party activists are in jail, mostly on trumped-up charges. More than 20 Awami League leaders have died in jail under mysterious circumstances, and even lawyers representing Awami League members in cases have been jailed. All activities of the Awami League have been declared unlawful.The Yunus administration suspects the Awami League is trying to hit the ground under the cover of protesting against minority persecution and appears determined to prevent it. Islamist parties have always fumed at the minority support base of the Awami League, which gives the party a clear edge in one-fifth of the country's parliament seats. Islamist parties have always played the communal card and branded the Awami League 'a stooge of India', a card that Yunus is more than willing to use to keep the Awami League at bay and continue in power without having to face elections.The Nobel laureate's pitch for the restoration of democracy is ringing increasingly hollow amidst rising 'mob justice' and his reluctance to announce a definite roadmap for elections.(Subir Bhaumik is a former BBC and Reuters correspondent and author who has worked in Bangladesh as a senior editor with bdnews24.com)- Ends(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)Tune InMust Watch