New York, July 04: A recently-formed Human Rights organisation has charged Bangladesh with committing "severe human rights violations" against religious minorities and said it plans to begin a "persisting lobby" against it on international forums. The Hague-based Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD) said it would bring the suppression of the monitories as also threat of "Bangladesh terrorism" to the notice of the international criminal court. It also criticised the European Union and the Dutch government, the major providers of developmental aid, for being "ineffective" in stopping the suppression of minorities. "Had they properly implemented their own condition for supply of development aid, they might have found it impossible to provide to Bangladesh," GHRD said. GHRD said in 1947 Hindus, the biggest religious minority, comprised 30 per cent of the population in Bangladesh.

"Religious cleansing -- systematic murder, torture, rape -- paired with severe human rights violations and discrimination by law and government rules and regulations, have made this figure decline to a mere ten per cent in 1991," it alleged. Since the installation of the Bangladesh nationalist party - Jamaat-e-Islami coalition in 2001, "an era of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism and severe atrocities against the already heavily attacked religious minorities of Bangladesh (Hindus, Christians and Buddhists) has come again," it added.

Bureau Report