At least 5 houses of a Hindu family were torched in Dumritala village in Bangladesh’s Pirojpur district (PHOTO: X)
A fire tore through Paschim Dumritala village in southern Bangladesh early Saturday morning, leaving three homes belonging to Hindu families in ashes. It happened around 6:30 am on December 27, and local news picked up the story fast.
The Saha family, with members Palash Kanti Saha, Shib Saha, Dipak Saha, Shyamalendu Saha, and Ashok Saha, lost everything. Furniture, cash, land records, school certificates, every bit of it gone.
Videos online show neighbours scrambling to fight the flames, but the fire moved too quickly.
This disaster didn’t happen in a vacuum. Attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh have been climbing. From June to December alone, at least 71 incidents tied to blasphemy accusations against Hindu minorities have been reported, according to the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities.
Just earlier this month, a mob lynched 27-year-old Dipu Chandra Das in Mymensingh district and set his body on fire, accusing him of blasphemy.
Police have arrested about a dozen people for his murder. Then, on December 24 in Rajbari Town, another Hindu man, Amrit Mondal (also called Samrat), was killed by a mob. The government pushed back, saying Mondal faced several serious charges and that his death wasn’t communal violence.
India hasn’t kept quiet. After news broke about these attacks, Indian officials voiced concern. Bangladesh’s government, for its part, called these “isolated incidents.”
On Saturday, Hindus from both India and Bangladesh gathered outside the Bangladesh High Commission in London to protest the killings.
They played “Amar Shonar Bangla,” Bangladesh’s national anthem, and shouted for an end to violence against religious minorities.
The London protest followed similar demonstrations across India the day before. There’s a sense that people are fed up, and they want answers.
Sharif Osman Bin Hadi’s party, Inqilab Moncho, just gave the Muhammed Yunus-led interim government a clear ultimatum: finish the murder trial for the 32-year-old youth leaders and bring everyone involved in Osman Hadi’s killing to justice within 24 days.
Hadi, who spoke for Inqilab Moncho and was running in the general elections, got shot in the head by masked men earlier this month, right as he kicked off his campaign in Dhaka. They airlifted him to Singapore, but he died there on December 18.
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