On Tuesday, 3rd December, a senior Bangladeshi government official claimed that the minority Hindu community was more protected in Bangladesh under the rule of the interim government than they were during the administration of deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. In an exclusive interview with India Today, Shafiqul Alam, the press secretary of the Muhammad Yunus government, claimed that Indian media was running an “industrial scale misinformation campaign” to spread false narratives about minorities being targeted in Bangladesh.
“Hindus are well protected here. They are more protected than they were during Sheikh Hasina’s regime. What we are witnessing here is an industrial scale misinformation campaign originating from India,” Alam was quoted as saying.
Since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in August this year, the minority community in Bangladesh has been targeted and several temples have been destroyed in the area in a major crackdown on Hindus. OpIndia has recorded several such incidents, the details of which can be read here. Further, the arrest of three Hindu priests has sparked a major controversy with minorities protesting across Bangladesh seeking justice.
Amid this, Alam during the interview confirmed that one of the Hindu temples in the Chittagong region was attacked, and an effort to strike three Iskcon centres in the previous week was executed. He however said that security in the region have been increased. “We are here to establish the human rights of every Bangladeshi irrespective of gender, ethnicity, race, and colour,” Alam further asserted.
However, he alleged that major atrocities against Hindus took place under the rule of Sheikh Hasina the minority community but none of it was reported. “Because it happened in Sheikh Hasina’s time, there is not a single report from any Indian media. There is not a single report from any diaspora group and no one in the British Parliament raised this issue,” he alleged.
Further denying that there was a deliberate crackdown on ISKCON, the official emphasized that the government had dispatched the military to the religious organization’s headquarters for security. “We made sure Hindus could celebrate Durga Puja… Have we banned ISKCON? We sent troops to guard Iskcon temples,” Alam said, referring to Iskcon as a religious organization.
Notably, during a hearing on a petition to ban ISKCON last week, the Bangladeshi attorney general referred to it as a “fundamentalist organization.” However, the court declined to prohibit Iskcon. Days later, the authorities froze the bank accounts of 17 people associated with ISKCON.
