Faulty media reports portray Bangladesh unfairly

Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam said yesterday that the minority issue in Bangladesh has been misrepresented in international media and influential nations’ top parliamentary hearings due to faulty reports by certain minority groups.

In a statement posted on his verified Facebook account, he urged secular newspapers and international rights groups to open probes into the alleged religious violence cases here to find out the truth.

“When the Netra News debunked the Bangladesh Hindu Buddha Christian Unity Council’s report on the attacks on the Hindu community in the post-revolution days, I expected the group to make a statement,” he said.

“After all, they were challenged by a top investigative website, which built its reputation by covering some of the biggest corruption and human rights violation stories in Bangladesh,” Shafiqul Alam said.

The press secretary said the Netra News report claimed that nearly all nine Hindu deaths, which the minority council attributed to communal hatred-related violence, were linked to other factors such as political, personal, and other reasons.

“Our expectations were that the unity council would respond to the Netra News report, for it raises serious questions about the way the council collects and files reports on violence against minorities in Bangladesh,” he said.

He also said the unity council also made a similar controversial report on the attacks on minorities in Bangladesh in July this year.

“It said in the 2023-24 financial year, beginning on July 1, 2023, at least 45 people of minority faiths — mostly Hindus — were killed in the country. Again, Bangladeshi newspapers carried the story on their front and back pages. And not a single media outlet challenged the report despite there being serious questions about the veracity of the unity council’s claims,” Alam said.

However, according to the Ain o Salish Kendra, the country’s largest human rights group, no one was killed in anti-minority violence in 2023 and only two persons were killed this year (January to October), he said.

The ASK is a secular group headed by human rights defender ZI Khan Panna. He has told local media that he would be interested in defending Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister in the July uprising, in trials.

Claiming that the Bangladesh Hindu Buddha Christian Unity Council’s reports have a far-reaching impact, the press secretary said when a British MP recently spoke about the attacks on minorities in Bangladesh, he quoted the Council’s report.

The report on the post-revolution attacks on Hindus was cited more than 11 million times in social media, he said.

“What I’ve learnt is that the powerful and deep-pocketed Hindu American groups, Indian national and regional newspapers, and top Indian commentators cite its report to portray the state of minorities in Bangladesh. Experts told me the Unity Council’s reports have been the single biggest source of misinformation on anti-minority violence in Bangladesh,” he added.

Alam said, “Violence against minorities happens in Bangladesh. We are still not the ideal country as far as communal harmony is concerned. We hear reports of discrimination based on religion. There are also regular bouts of violence triggered by allegedly blasphemous Facebook posts. And some fringe groups and figures often spread hate against minority people.”

In recent weeks, he said, there have been greater efforts by the interim government, political, religious, and civil society leaders urging people to stay calm during religiously tinged incidents.

Some of them have shown extraordinary political maturity in these events, he said.

However, he claimed, the Unity Council’s reports have systematically exaggerated the violence perpetrated against the minority people.

“We hope top secular and liberal newspapers will do their own probe into the alleged cases of religious violence reported by the council. We also hope international rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International will also do similar investigations,” the press secretary said.

The HRW did an excellent investigation into the massacres of Hefazat activists in 2013, he mentioned, hoping that the rights group would do a similar probe.

He said if the government does the debunking job, there is a strong chance that its reports will be seen with some sort of scepticism.

“Let the independent newspapers and rights groups probe these incidents. We think it is a serious issue, for Bangladesh has been unfairly portrayed in international media and top parliamentary hearings in influential nations,” Alam said.

He said some even call for sending UN peacekeepers to Bangladesh — or intervening in the country — based on these reports, and that is why the interim government wants fair investigations into the alleged cases of minority repression.