In another attack on minorities, 189 houses and 50 shops of Ahmadi Muslims were either looted or set on fire in northern Bangladesh, in the city of Ahmednagar in Panchagarh district, the Bitter Winter reported.
In a previous incident in a grim sequence of events, Jahid Hasan, a young man around 25 years of age, was clobbered to death on March 3. An Ahmadi Muslim, Hasan was murdered on the day of the inauguration of the 98th annual convention of Bangladeshi Ahmadi Muslims in the city of Ahmednagar in Panchagarh district, the Bitter Winter reported.
Jahid Ahmadi was trying to protect the convention grounds from the aggression of a large group of thugs, and his assassination followed attacks over three nights, the report said, adding that four other Ahmadis were also hospitalised in critical condition while more than 100 suffered injuries.
The Ahmadiya Mosque of Darul Wahid Mohalla neighbourhood and the Ahmadiya Medical Clinic and Laboratory was set ablaze, the report stated further, adding that 189 houses and 50 shops belonging to Ahmadi Muslims were looted or set on fire. Alarmingly, all these incidents took place in broad daylight and under the eyes of the police, the Bitter Winter reported.
The detailed news of this extended violence and killing was broadcast by the International Human Rights Committee (IHRC), a non-profit and non-governmental organisation focusing on freedom of religion or belief based in London.
The IHRC confirmed that the mob, which stormed the Ahmadi convention, was incited by the preaching of extremist Sunni Muslim clerics, who consider the Ahmadis heretics.
IHRC was also alerted to rumours of imminent attacks against the Ahmadiya Centers of Nasirabad, Kafuria, Islam Ganj and Borchor in Bangladesh on 10, 2023, the report stated.
This was an unacceptable episode of persecution against believers, motivated by intolerance and hatred, which no religious doctrine can allow and no theological dispute should justify, the Bitter Winter reported.
Some schools of Islamic thought consider Ahmadis as non-Muslims.
Further, according to the report, the situation of the Ahmadis in Pakistan turned unbearable in the first half of the 1980s, compelling many to leave or suffer harsh discrimination and open persecution.
The government of Pakistan discriminates against the Ahmadiya Muslims in several forms, with gangs of violent people encouraged to attack them in the streets openly, beat them, and even kill them, often in front of police officers who do not intervene, the Bitter Winter reported.
Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh has no state law discriminating against Ahmadiyas or declaring them non-Muslims. But there are fanatics who replicate the situation of Pakistan, whose Islamic fundamentalists are a source of inspiration for their Bangladeshi counterparts, the report said.
Pakistan, which is home to a Sunni majority, was born out of the Partition of India in 1947. The erstwhile East Bengal or East Pakistan also suffered the same fate.
East Pakistan was drawn into political, linguistic, ethnic, and religious controversies that burst out into a bloody civil war in 1971, which soon escalated into a genocide that ended with the independence of Bangladesh after an Indian intervention, the report noted.
( With inputs from ANI )
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