A total exclusion of Jamaat-e-Islami’s announcement to run the country in line with Sharia law alongside its social media platform’s “hate campaign” against the Ahmadiyya minority community in the latest annual report on religious freedom by the US has shocked members of the minority community and rights activists.
Calling the report “one-sided” and an “encouragement” for advocates of Sharia law, they were of the view that leaving out the crucial details in the report was “wilful”.
They also referred to repeated disregard of Jamaat’s active anti-Bangladesh role and war crimes during the Liberation War in 1971, continuous pressure on the government to allow Jamaat to hold rallies, and persistent refusal to acknowledge the 1971 genocide by the Pakistani forces assisted by Jamaat leaders.
“This latest US report seems driven by an agenda, not guided by principles,” said rights activist and former chairman of National Human Rights Commission of Bangladesh, Prof Mizanur Rahman.
Leaders of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council said they found absence of their reported observations on BNP-Jamaat’s “anti-minority” stance, calling the report a travesty in the name of neutrality.
“The report refers to some of our demands raised to the government but completely ignores our concerns against the fundamentalist groups and Tarique Rahman’s pre-national polls directive to decide the fate of the country on the streets. This is a biased approach from the US,” said Ranjan Karmakar, a human rights activist and presidium member of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council.
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This “lopsided” report is an addition to a growing list of “biased approach” that favors the BNP-Jamaat, minority community leaders observed.
Nirmal Rozario, another leader of the platform, referred to what he called “political meddling” by the US envoy in the past.
Ahmad Tabshir Choudhury, secretary of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at (AMJ) public relations, said, “Only when BGB forces arrived, normalcy was restored. Prompt rehabilitation efforts were undertaken and the government’s intervention was essential to keep the communal and fundamentalist forces at bay.”
In a press statement, the community leaders held communal and fundamentalist forces responsible for the incidents when US Ambassador Peter Haas visited the AMJ centre in Dhaka and lauded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for immediate rehabilitation efforts.
Basherkella, an X (formerly Twitter) account operating as a mouthpiece for Jamaat, called Haas a “true friend of Bangladesh.” The same handle ran “boycott Ahmadiyya” campaign following the attack on the community in March 2023.
Following the attack, Jamaat issued a statement, demanding that the government declare the Ahmadiyya community as “non-Muslims” and BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir slammed the government for allowing the community to hold a rally, calling the event “controversial.”
On October 28, 2023, the acting Jamaat ameer publicly vowed to enforce Sharia law in the country, saying that no man-made laws would be allowed to be in force, The Daily Star had reported.