Commonwealth group flags assaults on indigenous people in Bangladesh

Report highlights human rights abuses against indigenous communities and religious minorities in Bangladesh under interim government.

Indigenous communities as much as religious minorities, primarily Hindus, in Bangladesh have been under attack since the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government, a report of the Commonwealth All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) has said.

The group headed by British MP Andrew Rosindell said it has received evidence that raises questions about the efficacy of the interim regime led by Professor Muhammad Yunus. It said there is an urgent need to end the culture of “using the law as a political weapon”, and that human rights and the rule of law need to be upheld.

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It also said there is evidence emerging that hardline Islamists are becoming increasingly politically influential and visible since the fall of the Awami League government.

Citing various reports and testaments from minority rights groups and affected individuals, the APPG flagged the atrocities committed by the “illegal plain settlers and Bangladesh Army” in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), inhabited mostly by indigenous communities, who account for 1.8% of the country’s population.

The report said the Global Association for Indigenous Peoples of the CHT providedwritten evidence to the APPG’s inquiry. It said assaults on indigenous people were organised between September 19 and October 1 in several areas of the CHT after “an illegal settler was murdered by his own community” members.

The report said a total of 142 houses, shops and other business establishments, properties and Buddhist temples of indigenous people were set ablaze, destroyed, and looted by the plain settlers, apart from leaving 148 people injured. Such was the extent of the assaults that Buddhist monks cancelled a major religious ceremony because of the lack of security.