Mar 06,2023

THE heinous attacks that several groups of religious bigots have carried out on the Ahmadiyyas in a few neighbourhoods in the district headquarters of Panchagarh are unsettling. But what is unpalatable about this is that the violence, which broke out on March 2, continued until the night of March 4, leaving about 500 Ahmadiyya houses and business establishments burnt and damaged in half a dozen neighbourhoods that are home to 3,000 Ahmadiyya families. The violence left two people dead on the second day on March 3 — an Ahmadiyya community member who was tortured and stabbed to death and another, a participant in the demonstration against the Ahmadiyyas, who died from a birdshot wound in the head. The violence began after a March 2 road blockade by the religious bigots meant to protest against a yearly Ahmadiyya gathering, planned for March 3–5, had ended in the afternoon. The next morning remained calm but the violence again broke out after Friday’s congregational prayers about 2:00pm at Chowrangi in the town. The violence broke out yet again at night of March 4 over the rumoured death of two outside the Ahmadiyya community that was announced on the public address system of a mosque after 9:00pm. The administration postponed the yearly Ahmadiyya gathering.

The Ahmadiyyas lodged a complaint after the March 3 violence with the police, who have not until March 4 registered it as a case, saying that they were examining the complaint before further action. While the police struggled to contain the violence and afford protection to the community, especially on March 4, an Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Bangladesh leader has blamed inaction on part of the civil and the police administration for such a deplorable situation, noting that the police had been surprisingly reluctant at coming to their aid in the first three hours when the violence broke out on March 3. The violence having continued for three days with the administration having been in a position on March 2 to guess well what could be coming next speaks of glaring failures of the civil and the police administration that should be investigated along with the alleged reluctance of the police. What remains disconcerting is that several hundred religious bigots attacked the Ahmadiyyas, breaking through a police picket, and vandalised and burnt several dozen houses of the community at Ahmadnagar in Panchagarh on February 12, 2019. Many women of the community are also reported to have then been dragged out of their houses and physically assaulted. In that incident too, the community blamed the police for their failure to afford protection. A case was then filed but any progress in the investigation soon stopped coming to be heard.

While the government must investigate any administration failure in affording protection to the Ahmadiyyas in the case at hand, it must not allow the incident to be the deja vu of what happened in 2009 — incited attacks on the Ahmadiyyas, followed by administration failures and then an eerie silence of the administration about the whole episode, the likes of which have allowed the recurrence of such incidents involving minorities, religious and otherwise, at irregular interval.

source Govt must investigate failures in Ahmadiyya protection (newagebd.net)