Hindus
Decide: Save your Brethren or let them
Die
By Dr. Richard
L. Benkin
Address to
Telugu Association of North America (TANA)
Santa Clara, CA
July 2, 2011
Namaskar. Shphodim.
Last
month, I was in conversation about a book I wrote on Bangladesh’s ethnic
cleansing of its Hindu population. The
person with whom I spoke was very taken by the material; so taken that she wanted
to help make sure people got word of this atrocity. She knows the American publishing and book
buying world very well and said that all the elements were there for a
successful project; all the elements except one. And remember this person is a friend, an
ally, one of the “good guys,” someone who does
care and wants to help. She said, ‘I
just don’t see people getting real excited over a bunch of Hindus being killed.’ Think about that for a moment. It should make everyone in this room furious;
and if it does not make you furious,
you better ask yourself why because three things hit me—a non-Hindu—immediately.
My
first thought was, ‘Shame on us if that’s who we are.’ Is this another example in which the
so-called civilized world would prefer to wring its hands over body bags piled
too high to ignore—as it did in Nazi Europe, Rwanda, and countless other
places—rather than prevent the atrocity?
The second was that those of us who do understand what is happening have
a moral obligation to take effective action to stop it, whatever that means; or
we are as complicit in the crime as anyone else. And the third was this: Hindus better not count on anyone else helping
them, no matter how much they prattle on about things like “justice” or “human
rights.” Those supposed arbiters of
right and wrong might apply these concepts to Egyptian and Libyan protesters or
warp them beyond recognition so they can prop up those Arab terrorists they
call “Palestinian”; but they will not apply them to Hindus in Bangladesh—or for
that matter, Hindus in Pakistan, Hindus in Kashmir, Hindus in Malaysia, or Hindus
anywhere else, including if it comes to it, Hindus in Andhra Pradesh.
So
when considering this weekend’s events, I asked myself if it was going to be
another one of those gatherings where the attendees shake their fists and
complain about how unfair things are—or one where we actually accomplish
something. Despite the preponderance of
the former over the latter, we are on the cusp of a new dawn where real
accomplishment is possible. It will
start here in the United States, and it must begin with us; or else we will have
frittered away a golden opportunity to change the trajectory of history and in
the process sit by while a lot of innocent people die.
We
have a great tradition here in which groups of Americans can petition our
government and take concerted action, and I want to give you an example of that
from my own Jewish community. Those of
you who were around in the 1980s will remember that back then, you could not
pass a synagogue that did not have a large banner proclaiming, “Save Soviet
Jewry.” Our people were being persecuted
horribly in the Soviet Union as part of the Communists’ attempt to eradicate
their Jewish religion and Jewish identity.
A few, like Natan Sharansky
who later became an Israeli Cabinet Minister, garnered some attention, but most
suffered without fanfare. The American
Jewish community saw their persecuted brothers and sisters and recognized the
obligation to save them. Moreover, it acted on that obligation.
We
lobbied Washington and our local officials; prevailed upon other religious bodies
to recognize the atrocity and let Washington know their position. Average Jews who you might see at the office
or in the supermarket—people just like you—went to Russia at their own expense
to smuggle religious books and other Jewish artifacts at considerable peril to
themselves. After all, this was the
mighty Soviet Union.
Jewish
children reaching their Bar and Bat Mitzvah rite of passage were “twinned” with
children in the Soviet Union who did not have the freedom to celebrate their
own; so we did it for them. Younger
children in religious schools corresponded with pen pals their own age from the
USSR and gave them hope. And before it
was over, we helped get 1.2 million Jews out of that communist hell. It strengthened our own identity, and every
Jewish child who was part of that effort never forgot it or their own sense of
Jewishness; and it helped us realize that we could in fact stand strong for our people, that the only thing
stopping us was ourselves.
The
Bangladeshi Hindus can be your Soviet Jewry.
It is an issue of human decency; an issue that transcends partisan
politics and speaks to those values that are basic for all Americans. It can galvanize American Hindus to take
pride in their Hinduism and help support a resurgent Hindu youth. Will we act?
Two
years ago, I stood before you to talk about the Bangladeshi Hindus. Let me list for you everything that Sheikh Hasina and the Bangladeshi government has done to protect
their Hindu citizens since then:
[about
10 seconds of silence]
That’s
right, nothing, zip, bupkis. That
same “list,” moreover, contains everything the United Nations has done for
them, everything Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have done; every
word of protest uttered by the governments of India and the United States. It seems my friend is right: Nobody
gets excited over the killing of Hindus.
The
facts warrant a different reaction. In
fact, the numbers are so compelling they
cry out for an explanation. At the time of India’s partition in 1947, Hindus
made up a little less than a third of East Pakistan’s population. When East
Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, they were less than a fifth; thirty years
later, less than one in ten; and reliable estimates put the Hindu population at
less than eight percent today. Professor
Sachi Dastidar of the State
University of New York estimates that over 49 million Hindus are missing from
Bangladesh. Still having trouble
wondering where this is going? Take a look at Pakistan where Hindus are down to
one percent or Kashmir where they are almost gone. Take a look at the future of Bangladesh’s
Hindus if we do not act.
This
is not opinion or “Islamaphobia.” These
are facts! Want another?
For years, we have received report after report documenting anti-Hindu incidents
there; incidents including murder, gang rape, assault,
forced conversion to Islam, child abduction, land grabs, and religious
desecration. And while Bangladeshi
officials might object that the perpetrators were non-state actors, government
culpability rests, at the very least, on the fact that it pursues very few of
these cases and punishes even fewer perpetrators. And that’s our key. Unfortunately, minorities are attacked pretty
much everywhere. The critical question is
when it happens, does the majority population have a problem with it; and the
best measure of that is what the government does in reaction. When Hindu students were attacked in
Australia, the government went after the perpetrators with a vengeance. In the United States, crimes against any
minority are considered just that, crimes; and the state will punish you to the
fullest extent of the law; but not in Bangladesh.
Here’s
another irrefutable fact. While this
information pours out of Bangladesh with numbing ferocity, it does not do so through
the mainstream media—here, India, or anywhere else. Thus, people are often shocked and sometimes
dubious when I present the facts to them.
Many wonder out loud how something so horrible could be kept hidden; how
our own CIA or India’s RAW could not know about it—were it actually true. They often ask me why, if this is so dire
have we read nothing about it in our major papers or watched it on CNN or
Fox. ‘Why,’ they ask, ‘hasn’t Amnesty
International taken it up,’ or most damning, ‘Why have
Hindus themselves said nothing?’
This
means that anything we present has to be verified with certainty; if we present
information that turns out to be untrue or exaggerated it will sink our
efforts. We can expect the Bangladeshi
government and even the US State Department to challenge it; and expect the
recognized human rights industry to dismiss it.
Both parties have an interest to do so, for if we are correct, Amnesty
International and the others will be asked why they missed or ignored the
situation. The Obama Administration and
the rest of the international talking heads have maintained as an article of
faith that the December 2008 election of Sheikh Hasina
and the Awami League ushered in a new era for Bangladesh. They will point out that it ended almost two years
of military-backed rule; and the government before that, , included the
Islamist Jamaat in its coalition. Moreover, they will say, the left-center
Awami League has always claimed to be Bangladesh’s “pro-minority” party, and
these outside groups with no real knowledge of Bangladesh swallow that line. So, it is in their interest to maintain that
fiction.
And
they are not the only ones. In January
2009, I was asked to address a coalition of Bangladeshi Hindu organizations
about how they might respond to the Awami League victory. My advice was to press their advantage since
Hindus helped Awami to victory. The last
thing they should do, I said, was to “fall asleep. That would be a critical mistake.” Some agreed, but the prevailing sentiment
among the organization leaders was fear of angering the new government. “Give them
time,” they said, to which I replied, “This attitude of passivity and ‘let's
give them a chance’; how well has that worked for the minorities in the
past? Not well. We are sitting by while people are being
killed and tortured! So, yes, we must
give them some time—but not much or we will see that their words are nothing more than words.” And that is exactly all they turned out to
be.
During
the first year of the Awami League’s rule, there were major anti-Hindu attacks
at the rate of at least one per week. I
say “at least” because you will recall that our allegations will be held to a
higher standard than most. Out of the
flood of reported incidents, those were the ones I personally verified—either
through my own missions to South Asia or through Indian and Bangladeshi Hindus
who investigated and verified the allegations for me. All of these attacks were serious, involved
Hindu victims and Muslim victimizers; and in every case, the government refused
to take action against known perpetrators.
Police and government officials actually took part in some and led a
cover up of others. And in none of them,
did the police help recover Hindu women or children who were abducted, likely
raped, and forcibly converted to Islam. And
I re-confirmed the facts as recently as this spring, so the government’s
support for anti-Hindu action lasts long after the crimes themselves. Here are three examples.
• For
three days in March and April, 2009, an anti-Hindu pogrom raged in the Sutrapur section of the Bangladeshi capital. It occurred right behind a police station and
involved arson, beatings, and the deliberate destruction of a Hindu
Temple. Many were hospitalized, and
dozens still remain homeless. Not only are the perpetrators free of
prosecution, but they actually were awarded some of the land they invaded. Officials including the Dhaka Chief of Police
and an Awami League Member of Parliament warned local human rights groups to
stop inquiring about it.
• On
June 13, 2009, 20-year-old Hindu college student Koli
Goswami was abducted from her bed in the middle of
the night. Muslim men broke into the
family home and brandished firearms when confronted by family members. Police refuse to pursue a case, calling it a
“love affair,” despite admitted evidence of violence and a struggle. They claim that Koli
has “voluntarily” converted to Islam and threaten family members and human
rights groups while keeping them from interviewing the young woman. Koli Goswami has not been seen since the night she was taken.
• At
10am on February 26, 2009, two men abducted 14 year old Tanusree
Roy and raped her multiple times.
Although the distraught father has filed official reports of the
incident, authorities have refused to help recover his child or prosecute the
known perpetrators. The latter continue
to threaten Tanusree’s father if he does not drop the
matter. Human rights activists report
that the girl has been forcibly converted to Islam and kept incommunicado for
the past two years.
There
was no let-up during the Awami League’s second year in office. In one 25 day period between March 12 and
April 6, 2010, for instance, there were seven major, confirmed attacks.
All
we get from the Bangladeshis are words. Like
actors reading from a script, they repeat the same hollow denials—the same party
line I got when I raised the issue with a Bangladeshi Cabinet Minister in Dhaka
earlier this year. He might have
parroted the usual denials, but his nervous ticks, obvious discomfort, and
averted glance told quite a different story.
(I also recall how several years ago, a Bangladeshi general tried to
convince me that their Vested Property Act was actually instituted as a device
to protect Hindus, although when I
pressed him he could not explain how that could work.) And how many times are we going to hear their
empty promises to repeal “anti-minority laws.”
Sheikh Hasina made that very promise to
visiting NATO commander Gerard Valin on May 1, 2009,
thereby admitting that her country in
fact has anti-minority laws on the books.
In the long standing tradition of Bangladeshi leaders, she went no
further than those words and the discriminatory laws remain. Yet, no nation or international body seems to
have a problem with that.
What
message does that send to anyone who covets a Hindu family’s small farm—or
their daughter? And what message are we sending them—and our own children—if
we look the other way while it happens?
There
is something else. Some of you might be
thinking, ‘Perhaps that is all true, but my family is from Andhra Pradesh where
we have our own problems. This is about
Bengalis.’ And that plays right into the
hands of those who wish to destroy us.
Were the bombs that went off on 26/11 harmful only to some? Did they discriminate between Telugu and
Bengali? Did the killers ask people if
they were from Kashmir or Gujurat before firing? And if they destroy the Hindus in Bangladesh
and Kashmir, will they then say, ‘it is enough’ and urge their fellow jihadis to leave Andhra Pradesh in
peace? No, no, no, and no again.
If we fail to unite, we will be easy pickings for our enemies—who have put
aside their own ancient divisions for the sake of jihad.
So,
instead of treating you to a litany of more atrocities, I want to identify one simple
thing we all can do from our secure positions in the United States. Everyone can decide today whether to do
something simple and save lives or watch another rerun of House or Law and Order
while the murders and rapes continue.
To
get things started, we have to make people aware of the problem. Despite the flood of emails and consistent
documentation successive in Hindu American Foundation reports, few people here
are aware of this atrocity or how it threatens them, and we have to fix that.
Human rights atrocities generally proceed when governments believe they
can commit them without anyone noticing—or caring—which is what we have
here. For Bangladesh, that means that it
incurs no cost if it allows its Hindus to be eradicated; that is, their leaders
have pointed out the domestic political concerns if they take action, but they
have none if they let things remain as they are. We have to make it cost more for them not to change.
The
US is Bangladesh’s third largest trading partner, and we have given Bangladesh over
$5.5 billion in aid. For years,
Bangladeshi governments—regardless of party—have wanted a free trade agreement
with the United States or at least a reduction in tariffs on their goods. You might call it their holy grail. That is a tremendous amount of leverage we
can exercise if we have the will to do so, and it will take a concerted and
relentless effort to get our elected officials to use it.
I
am currently working with a Member of Congress on a letter that addresses this
issue. It will ask the US to re-consider
its policies and use all of that leverage to save the 15 million Bangladeshi
Hindus. Because at this point, the
actual letter is unfinished and needs final approval, I cannot divulge the
Member’s name or the specific contents; but the initiative is real and his support
genuine. Once it is complete—hopefully during
the summer—we will look for other Members of Congress to sign it before sending
it to Secretary of State Clinton. Do we
expect that this letter will lead the US government to all of a sudden revamp
its entire foreign policy? No, but
remember the intent: to shine light on
an atrocity that is allowed to proceed because it does so in the dark.
Hopefully,
the administration will take a serious look at the issue; but whether it does
so or not, the letter will provide the basis for further action: Congressional hearings, which are already in
the works; confronting the Bangladeshis; and from there action on trade and
tariffs. It will take this issue to a new
level, and everyone in this room can and should have a role in making it happen
because success is premised on getting a range of Congressmen and Congresswomen
to sign it. When you came in,
you were given a piece of paper to fill out with contact information and
questions to determine who your Congressional Representative is. Everyone here who votes can help get that
elected official’s signature on the letter and support for the actions we take
subsequently to stop this carnage.
Please pass in the papers. Now, can each of you do that one small
thing? Is there anyone here who can’t?
That’s
good, because Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) once said that any Member of
Congress who gets ten phone calls on an issue will sit up and take notice, call
staff meetings about it, and probably support their constituents’ position; but
whether it is ten, two, or a hundred, the principle is the same. Using these papers, I will identify Members
of Congress whom you can call and we can go to for support. When we are ready to circulate the letter, I
will contact each of you and ask you to make that call. Moreover, each of you knows other citizens
who can make the same call. Urge them to
do it—even if they live in the same house as you; so long as they are eligible
to vote in the next election. My
associate, Prasad Yalamanchi will help with that, but
today he and I will be getting information from people and groups that can get
things done.
There
is something else we can do, and it refers to something that is happening
now. Last month, Bangladesh’s Supreme
Court ruled against some constitutional amendments instituted during two
military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, and it asked the government to submit
replacements for ratification in the Awami-dominated parliament. So what did this oh-so-progressive and
freedom-loving Awami League do? It submitted new laws that outlawed military
governments and religiously-based parties; but it left intact one of the most
significant amendments that came under the Court’s scrutiny: the Eighth, which made Islam the official
state religion and essential to the character of all that flows from Bangladeshi
law. It is an amendment that Hindus and
others say makes them second-class citizens in their own country. Every law they have to follow begins with “in
the name of Allah the beneficent.” Madrassas (Islamic schools) are given a
favored position by their government
and often receive public support, even those preaching radical Islam. This is not
the action of a government that really wants to protect its minority citizens,
but rather one closer to Iran. It is
certainly not the action of a “moderate Muslim nation,” which is how Bangladesh
tries to portray itself.
Has
there been even one phone call from President Obama or Secretary of State
Clinton to Bangladesh, challenging the government on this or other anti-minority actions? Has anyone reminded Sheikh Hasina of her still unfulfilled promises to end official
minority discrimination in Bangladesh—and how she has an opportunity with this
constitutional change to prove that she and her party are not shams? The answer to all those questions is the same: “No.” I ask my esteemed colleagues at the Hindu
American Foundation to work with me now to prevail upon Congress and the
Administration to address this matter with Bangladesh while there is still time
to fix things. It will also tell us if
these people deserve our votes next year.
Let
me put it to you this way. If there was
a similar situation involving Muslims somewhere in the world, what do you think
the American Muslim community would do?
How vocal would organizations like Council on American-Islamic Relations
be? What about Jewish organizations or
Evangelical Christians for their co-religionists? Do Hindus have fewer rights than they
do? Does the American Constitution say
‘everyone except Hindus’? No; the only
thing stopping us is ourselves. For this
effort to succeed, we do not need the entire 2.5 million Hindus in the United
States to act. But we do need a core
group of individuals who care more about the lives of their oppressed brethren
than being thought impolite. And it
starts here; it starts today. From this
effort, we can make the issue of
anti-Hindu oppression a US
concern. Each of you can do this one
thing, and possibly save the lives of millions of people.
Once
we find success in this quarter, we can expand in any direction we wish; tackle
any anti-Hindu human rights issues we want—those in Pakistan, Kashmir,
Malaysia, Fiji, or anywhere else. In the
lead up to the November 2010 vote, some of us in the Chicago area helped
organize community members in support of certain candidates who will support
us. As a result, some people are
beginning to see the Hindu community as a constituency that cannot be ignored;
whose concerns cannot be dismissed. And
it will stay that way only so long as we continue to exert whatever advantage
we have and deny our support to those lawmakers who do not care about those
issues important to us, who do not care if Hindus are being killed and raped in
Bangladesh. We have a critical election
coming up in 16 months, and the papers you filled out today will be added to
others to help elect lawmakers who will stand with us and not let our brothers
and sisters in Bangladesh or anywhere else be persecuted with impunity.
Whatever
we do, however, it all ultimately depends on you. Some of us who are dedicated to saving the
Bangladeshi Hindus can lead, can organize, can take on a certain amount of the
burden; but our efforts will come to little if people see that the rest of the
community does not care enough to stand up and say so. The Congressional letter will be our first
test.
And
just in case you are wondering whether why you should take this tiny step,
please allow me this one last piece of motivation. In 2009, I interviewed a Bangladeshi Hindu family
that crossed into India only 22 days earlier. They told me about an uncle being
killed, the father beaten, and their tiny farm invaded by a large number of
Muslims. I also looked into the eyes of their 14-year-old daughter as she talked
about being gang raped. Who did it? Not al Qaeda or Jammat; but simply Muslims who
lived in the area and knew they could have their way with the family, seize
their land, and get away with it.
Joseph
Stalin is said to have remarked, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a
statistic.” That 14-year-old rape victim—that child—I met was no statistic, and
God help us if we make her one.
Thank
you.