More Silence about Islamist Ethnic Cleansing
by Richard L. Benkin (February 2010)
In
a few weeks, I again will be with Bangladeshi Hindu refugees in a
number of illicit camps throughout North and Northeast India. They
fled to the world’s largest democracy and the country most closely
identified with their faith, hoping for aid and comfort after being
victimized next door by Islamic radicals, a government that supports
minority oppression, and everyday Bangladeshi Muslims who are made to
profit from attacks on their Hindu neighbors.
In several other visits to these camps, I have witnessed, seen evidence of, or heard from victims of
· Gang rape, often ritualized, often perpetrated against multiple members of the same family
· Murder
· Abduction, especially of Hindu children and young women
· Forced conversion to Islam
· Religious desecration, including arson and the destruction of Hindu temples and dieties
· Violent seizures of Hindu land, carried out under the protection of police, other officials, and even Bangladeshi law
· Assaults on defenseless victims
· Organized attacks by Muslim mobs
As
heart wrenching as it is, however, to stare into the eyes of a young
teen while she tells you of being gang raped, all of these atrocities
are also symptoms of at least two far more insidious phenomena, which
we have no choice but to fight and fight relentlessly. This
organized attack on non-Muslims is part of the wider international jihad that
threatens all civilized peoples, Bangladesh has become one giant
Petri Dish for the Islamists, and what we do—or do not do—there will
tell them how well their strategy will work elsewhere and how
well-founded their assumptions about us are. Even beyond that
existential threat, however, this is not about one or another
sensationalistic event but about a system of legalized oppression and
ethnic cleansing that has been proceeding almost without a break for
more than three decades. That is the reality for Bangladesh’s
13-15,000,000 Hindus, and it places every one of them at risk. For
despite the current Bangladeshi government’s protestations to the
contrary—which they glibly issue in the face of opposing
evidence—Hindus in Bangladesh live without equal protection under the
law and are therefore subject to arbitrary actions by the Muslim
majority.
Yet
while events like the attempted terrorist bombing of Northwest flight
253 over Detroit on Christmas day remind us of that constant threat
facing us; no one ever alerts us to this quiet case of ethnic cleansing
and how it is just as dramatically a part of the same threat.
At
the time of India’s Partition in 1948, Hindus accounted for about a
third of the East Pakistani population. When East Pakistan became
Bangladesh in 1971, they were about a fifth. Today, they are less
than one tenth. There have been no UN resolutions condemning the
perpetrators; no outraged world leaders speaking out about it; not a
single protest from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, or the
rest of the misnomered human rights industry. The Hindus of
Bangladesh are being wiped out, and no one seems to care. Yet, if
this was happening to the Muslims of India those same bodies would
decry “Hindu extremism” and excuse Islamist attacks on India as
justified outrage. But in fact, that is not what is happening, as
South Asian Islamists are progressively changing Indian
demographics. During roughly the same period, Indian’s Muslim
population has actually grown, rising from about nine percent to
perhaps 20. In West Bengal, the Indian state on Bangladesh’s western
border, Muslims were at 25 percent at the start of this century, and
many estimate them to be at least 30 percent today—thanks in part to a
friendly communist state government.
Bangladeshi
governments regardless of party have been complicit in the ethnic
cleansing of Hindus. In almost every atrocity, they either allowed
the perpetrators to act with impunity or actively participated in it
with them. The country even has a law, the Vested Property Act
that empowers the government to seize non-Muslim land and distribute it
to Muslims of its choice. It has been in force for 35 years—and no
arbiter of human rights has complained; no morally-outraged country has
ever conditioned business or aid on its repeal. Their de juro bigotry
is the economic fuel for destroying their Hindu communities, which in
Pakistan is now down to one percent from 20—and I saw much of that
remnant streaming into Indian Punjab in March ahead of the advancing
Taliban.
The
United Nations, which never tires of telling us in one way or another
how it is the arbiter of right and wrong in the world, is actually a
major supporter of ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh and
Pakistan. Bangladesh and Pakistan (which has the same
confiscatory law with a different name) supplies more UN
peacekeeping troops than any other country. In November 2009, the
last month for which figures are available, each had more than 10,000
of its citizens employed as peacekeeping forces on the UN
payroll. The United States had 76, Australia 105, the UK
281. China—another pillar of democracy—had over 2000. These
peacekeeping jobs are critical to the Bangladeshi economy and polity,
as we saw during the country’s 2007 military coup. According to
the standard narrative, the coup occurred because impending elections
were revealed as fraudulent, and there was a great deal of unrest in
the streets. While that did happen, the coup came about for very
different reasons.
When
I arrived in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka three days before the
coup, I was greeted with the bizarre spectacle of every single
democracy urging the Bangladeshis not to hold
elections—especially bizarre in retrospect since they since accepted
rigged elections in Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Bangladeshi
freedom fighter and Muslim Zionist Shoaib Choudhury, who I was with at
the time, and I were informed of the coup shortly before it
happened. Our sources also told us that the military decided to
move because its leaders believed that the UN was about to join the
democracies and threaten its ability to supply peacekeeping
troops—which makes sense. No one wants 10,000 unemployed, armed,
and angry young men forced into the country. Clearly, the UN has
the ability to influence the Bangladeshis by making participation in
peacekeeping missions contingent on an end to minority oppression (both
in law and in fact). It merely chooses not to do so.
Getting
the UN to act is one way we can stop the march of Islamists and ethnic
cleansing. Legal scholars can force a review based on the
Vested Property Act. Others can focus on the numbers provided
above: one third, one fifth, one tenth; a drop that does not occur
through normal demographic processes. Making this reality
something world leaders cannot ignore is another. Neither the
international human rights industry nor the rogue’s gallery that
populates the various UN human rights commissions will be any
help.
Under the auspices of a new NGO, Forcefield, several Indian colleagues and I are planning a no-holds-barred documentary about this human rights disaster. Forcefield is a non-agenda
driven human rights organization—which means it is not anti-Israel or
anti-US, and has no leftist agenda that drives its choice of
issues. Neither will it ignore human rights abuses simply because
they are carried out by Islamists. Through the documentary and
other vehicles, Forcefield expects to educate publics and lawmakers to what is happening to the Hindus of Bangladesh.
Trade is yet another critical area. The United States is a major
importer of Bangladeshi goods, and over the past six years, I have
helped stop several attempts to award Bangladesh tariff relief; this as
part of our efforts on behalf of Shoaib Choudhury, whom the Bangladesh
government continues to persecute. (Congressman and Senate
candidate Mark Kirk has been and continues to be key ally in efforts to
stopping these atrocities.)
The
Bangladeshis will never stop these atrocities because of arguments
about right and wrong; we tried that. Even the current government is no
different than its predecessors; it has no internal dynamic for
change. It continues to benefit from the Vested Property Act and
does not want to anger potential voters by bucking the standard
Islamist line. But we can identify and push on the many pressure
points that Bangladeshis cannot ignore, such as those noted
above. Those efforts are underway, and anyone wishing to join
them, contribute to Forcefield, or become part of our call chain to contact members of the US Congress and Senate should email me at drrbenkin@comcast.net.
How
serious is this? Throughout history, hardcore believers alone have
never been sufficient for ethnic cleansing or genocide. Their
success required a compliant authority and a large stable of everyday
people to carry it out. That is exactly what they now have in
Bangladesh as did others who led mass murders in Nazi Germany, Rwanda,
Sudan, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. Islamists will judge us by
whether we stop this one or remain content to let it happen—when it
will be too late for us, too.
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