Religious minorities in Bangladesh continue to face targeted violence, raising alarm among human rights organisations both within the country and internationally. Reports from various rights groups highlight the increasing frequency of attacks on Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian communities, with incidents of murder, rape, destruction of temples, and vandalism of homes and businesses. However, instead of addressing these concerns, Bangladesh’s Chief Advisor Dr Mohammed Yunus has sought to downplay the violence, attributing such incidents to personal disputes and unrelated criminal activities. His statements have been widely criticised for emboldening religious fundamentalists and making leaders of minority rights organisations more vulnerable to further attacks.
In response, the New Delhi based Rights and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG) has called on the UN Secretary-General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and diplomatic missions in Dhaka to intervene against Dr Yunus’s repeated attempts to dismiss the religious dimension of these attacks. The RRAG argues that by framing violence against religious minorities as isolated incidents of crime or personal enmity, Dr Yunus is shielding fundamentalist elements and undermining the plight of vulnerable communities in Bangladesh.
On March 25, 2025, Dr Yunus released a statement titled “A Rejoinder to the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddho-Christian Council’s Latest Report,” in which he asserted: “With respect to the killings, preliminary investigations by the police indicate that these incidents were not connected to communal violence. Rather, these tragic deaths occurred at the hands of troublemakers, driven by a variety of factors such as prior enmity, theft, domestic disputes, and reckless behaviour.” This statement directly contradicts findings from the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council, which had documented 92 incidents of violence against minorities in January and February 2025 alone. These included 11 murders, three cases of rape, 25 attacks on temples, six assaults on indigenous communities, and multiple acts of vandalism, looting, and job dismissals.
Dr Yunus’s remarks are not new. On September 5, 2024, without any formal investigation, he had claimed that attacks on Hindu religious minorities were “politically motivated.” Four months later, on 10 January 2025, the Bangladesh Police verified 1,234 incidents, with 98.4% of them reportedly aligning with Yunus’s earlier assertion—leading to accusations that the police investigation was manipulated to support his narrative.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has contradicted the claims of both Dr Yunus and the Bangladesh Police. In its “Fact-Finding Report: Human Rights Violations and Abuses Related to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh,” released on February 12, 2025, the OHCHR confirmed that Hindu, Ahmadiyya Muslim, and indigenous communities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts were subjected to violent attacks, including arson and the destruction of places of worship. The report highlighted that these attacks were driven by a combination of religious and ethnic discrimination, local disputes, and political revenge.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), in its two-part documentary “The Plight of Hindus in Bangladesh,” aired on January 3 and 10 2025, reinforced these findings. It reported that “shocking new videos of alleged attacks continue to appear on social media, with little or no acknowledgement from a world that is now questioning their legitimacy.”
Calling for urgent international intervention, RRAG Director Suhas Chakma stated: “These statements are unbecoming of a head of government, that too a Nobel Laureate. Regrettably, Dr Yunus has become the Provocateur-in-Chief for the attacks on religious minorities in Bangladesh by condoning the violence as normal criminal acts and making the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council leaders extremely vulnerable to further attacks.”
