THE death of 45 people of minority communities in sectarian violence in July 2023鈥揓une 2024, as a Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council report claims, is alarming. The report, made public on July 8, says that there were 1,045 incidents of attacks and rights violations against religious minorities in a year. The incidents include 10 cases of attempted murders, 479 cases of physical repression and extortion, 45 cases of land and household grabs or attempts to grab and attacks, ransacking and arson on 102 houses and business establishments. Besides, at least 11 minority families were forced to leave the country in the period. The report also says that attacks on people from minority communities increased around the elections. The report raises a few questions, too. The claim appears confusing as the report says that most of the attacks, about 70 per cent, centred on land-related issues, with people enjoying political clout attempting to grab land of people of minority communities. If that is the case, the cases can hardly be incidents of sectarian violence although, in some cases, conflict over land grabbing can take the form of sectarian violence as grabbers intentionally make it so.
On June 26, a Bangladesh Peace Observatory report based on an analysis of violence on minority communities in 2013鈥�22 said that about 70 per cent of the incidents were land-related and, in most cases, influential people belonging to and having connections with the ruling Awami League were behind the incidents. Media reports also show that most of the incidents that pass as sectarian violence were land-related conflicts where grabbers, mostly connected to the ruling party, used some sectarian pretexts to grab land of people of minority communities. Besides, influential government officials are also reported to have been involved in many cases of violence or intimidation. On June 7, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council alleged that the a former police chief, also a former director general of the Rapid Action Battalion, grabbed the land of poor Hindu and Christian families, using the law enforcers and Awami League leaders and activists to intimidate poor people of different minority groups in Gopalganj, Madaripur, Gazipur and Bandarban and force them to sell their land for prices lower than market rates. Sectarian violence often triggered by misinformation and bigotry has, meanwhile, continued, suggesting a worrying failure of the government in containing such violence and of the state in ensuring the safety and security of people of different religious and ethnic minorities.
Communal violence, whether centred on religious intolerance, bigotry or land grab, has continued because of the failure of the authorities to bring the perpetrators of earlier incidents to justice. The authorities must, therefore, investigate every incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.
