The Bangladesh crisis has resulted in Sheikh Hasina's ouster. The country's founding father Mujibar Rahman was insulted and Hindus were attacked.
But now what has come to light is startling enough - even the 'Ahmadiyya Muslims' got their share of nightmare.
A policeman guards an Ahmadi mosque in the Bogra district of northern Bangladesh in this 2015 file photo following a militant gun attack. (Photo: UCAN files)
Alim Ahmed Siam, a ninth-grader, has been having frequent panic attacks since an Islamist mob attacked Ahmadnagar, a village in northern Bangladesh’s Panchagarh district on Aug. 5. The attackers beat up the men and took their time looting every single house before setting them on fire — reducing to ashes 117 properties including homes, shops, and a mosque. For over a month, many of the village’s 400 Ahmadiyya people sought refuge inside a religious complex nearby while some had to pitch tents under the open sky -- goes an article in Church-run UCA News.
A dozen families, including Siam’s, continue to live on the Ahmadiyya mosque premises. They are too poor to rebuild temporary shelters and have even lost their livelihoods.
A 40-year-old Ahmed is a retired army man. He was nearly 450 kilometers away from home in Jashore when the village was attacked on the very day former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, fled the country after a violent student-led uprising. Away from his family, Ahmed panicked and had to be hospitalized in Jashore, runs the report.
He now says, the family survived a similar attack in March last year. One person was killed and around 200 houses and shops were damaged in Ahmadnagar and two other adjacent villages populated by Ahmadiyyas. “I narrowly escaped death then,” said Ahmed. “And after all these sufferings, peace is not in sight. We live in constant fear of being attacked again.”
This shows attack on Ahmadiyas is regular in Bangladesh.
In fact, on Sept. 22, Islamists demonstrated at the Panchagarh district headquarters demanding that the Ahmadiyyas withdraw a case filed over last year’s attack. An uneasy calm prevails in the affected villages with army patrols guarding the Ahmadiyya homes.
The law and order situation remains fragile with mobs attacking police stations after Hasina fled. The interim government led by "west-blue-eyed boy" Muhammad Yunus is struggling to deal with sectarian clashes and attacks against religious and ethnic minorities continuing across the country.
Certainly, the overthrow of Hasina’s government has "boosted Islamists who have secured a place in the interim government, indicating a political shift" in the South Asian nation from center-left to right and probably extreme right, says the article penned by Emran Hossain.
“Our main concern is the security of our lives and property. How long can the situation continue like this? Sooner or later, we will have to face the reality,” said Mohammad Salauddin, the imam of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat in Panchagarh.
At least 150 Ahmadiyya families need to be fed daily after they lost everything including their livelihoods in the Aug. 5 attack, he said.
ends
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