Guwahati: The Rights and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG) has called upon the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, heads of diplomatic missions, and international organizations in Dhaka to intervene against the repeated emboldening of religious fundamentalists within the majority Muslim community in Bangladesh.
The RRAG alleged that Bangladesh’s chief advisor Dr. Mohammed Yunus has consistently downplayed acts of violence against Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian minorities, characterizing them as “personal disputes,” “criminal acts,” or “accidents.”
According to the group, this characterization aims to obscure the religious motivations behind these attacks and disregard the vulnerability of the victims due to their religious beliefs.
On March 25, Chief Advisor Dr. Mohammed Yunus, in a response to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Council’s recent report, asserted that police investigations suggest recent killings were not related to communal violence.
He attributed the deaths to ‘troublemakers’ motivated by factors such as personal disputes, theft, and reckless behaviour.
The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, in a press release on March 13, stated that “violence against religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous communities continues unabated as in the past”.
“In the first two months of this year, 92 incidents of violence targeting minorities and indigenous communities were recorded, including 11 murders, 3 rapes, and numerous attacks on religious and community properties,” the release stated.
“The assertion of Chief Advisor Dr Yunus and the Bangladesh Police that there are no attacks based on religious belief are contrary to the conclusive findings of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which conducted an investigation at the invitation of Chief Advisor himself,” Suhas Chakma, Director of the RRAG, said.
He said, “The OHCHR in its ‘Fact-Finding Report: Human Rights Violations and Abuses Related to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh’ released on February 12, 2025, regarding the attacks on religious minorities stated that during and after the protests, members of the Hindu community, Ahmadiyya Muslims and indigenous groups in the Chittagong Hill Tracts were also subject to violent attacks by mobs.”
“Some Jamaat-e-Islami and BNP supporters, members, and local leaders were also involved in revenge violence and attacks on distinct religious and indigenous groups. However, the information available to OHCHR has not shown that such incidents were orchestrated or organised by these parties’ national leaderships, which also took steps to condemn violence targeting minority groups,” Chakma added.
Chakma urged the international community to intervene, stating that Dr. Yunus’s statements, which downplay religious motivations in attacks, are inappropriate for a head of government and a Nobel Laureate.
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He argued that these statements have effectively emboldened perpetrators and increased the vulnerability of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council leaders.
