Stepping out of his vehicle clutching a handheld microphone in one hand and a pistol in the other, #Bangladesh’s State Minister for Liberation War Affairs Ishraque Hossain—neither a police officer nor any anti-drug official—was spotted publicly chasing some alleged drug peddlers. He openly threatened to open fire if they did not surrender. He and others of his team then seized a few suspects and handed them over to the police.   Hossain is not an ordinary citizen. He is a sitting Member of Parliament from the #BNP and a State Minister. Yet he brandished a firearm in broad daylight, threatened to shoot people, and later uploaded the entire spectacle to his verified Facebook page under the self-congratulatory caption “Ishraque’s Action: Drug den dismantled, peddlers handed over to the police.”   The incident occurred near a slum in Dhaka. Police confirmed that six alleged peddlers were detained and that a powder-like substance was recovered and sent for testing. That does not change the core fact: a government minister took the law into his own hands, waved a pistol around, and threatened lethal force against civilians.   He is a minister. He is not a cop. He has no business wielding a gun and playing action-hero on the streets. This is not crime-fighting; it is a dangerous, publicity-seeking misuse of power that normalises vigilantism by those who hold high office. This is blatant abuse of power by a minister.

In a recent #DurgaPuja programme in #India, pro-Hindutva organisers staged a #Muslim man as the demon Asura and had a group of Hindu women publicly “slay” him—an explicit restaging of Goddess Durga killing Mahishasura.   The video circulated widely across social media. The message is unmistakable: Muslims are the demon to be slain by Hindus.   In Hindu-majority India, anti-Muslim hatred has become so deeply entrenched that even a major Hindu religious festival is shamelessly weaponised to demonise an entire community. When bigotry hijacks faith and prejudice masquerades as religious devotion, it exposes the scary depths to which #Hindutva-driven communal hatred has dragged the Indian society.   When public spectacles repeatedly cast Muslims as villains, enemies, and legitimate targets for symbolic violence, it is no longer “art.” It is the normalisation of anti-Muslim prejudice and the deliberate cultivation of collective contempt.   Worse, Hindutva organisers package this as entertainment or sacred symbolism in Hindu-majority society. They condition audiences to see Muslims as subhuman, as a detestable other whose destruction can be cheerfully accepted.   Hatred of an entire people is dressed up as devotion; prejudice is sold as piety; the theatrical killing of a Muslim stand-in becomes festive spectacle.   No religious festival has the right to manufacture fear, legitimise hostility, or push the poisonous lie that Indian Muslims are enemies of Hindus or of India who deserve only hatred. That claim is pure Hindutva propaganda—false, corrosive, and increasingly mainstream.   Unfortunately, in Modi’s India, his Hindutva foot soldiers are in shameless actions to deepen communal hostility, and push an already marginalised community further to the fringes of society. This grotesque portrayal of Goddess Durga slaying a Muslim is a calculated act of Hindutva-driven dehumanisation, weaponising religious symbolism to demonise Muslims, normalise anti-Muslim bigotry, legitimise social exclusion, and condition the public to view the persecution of Muslims as acceptable, even righteous.   This grotesque portrayal of Goddess Durga slaying a Muslim is a pernicious Hindutva exercise designed to normalise prejudice, legitimise exclusion, and make the persecution of Muslims increasingly acceptable in the eyes of the public.   #USCIRF

Professor #MuhammadYunus is far more than the chief adviser of #Bangladesh’s last interim government. He is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist, an internationally celebrated figure, and the first Bangladeshi to bring that highest global honour to our nation. Every patriotic Bangladeshi takes pride in his achievement and loves him. Yet at JFK Airport in New York, a gang of #AwamiLeague goons launched a vicious verbal assault on this 86-year-old statesman. They hurled abuse, branded him a “terrorist,” and tried to intimidate a man whose lifelong work has earned worldwide respect. They probably lacked the guts to launch a physical assault on him inside the airport, knowing full well that security personnel would have caught and arrested them on the spot. Targeting a frail octogenarian celebrity in a foreign airport is not protest—it is pure, gutless political hooliganism. Hochemin Islam, a self-styled Bangladeshi “transgender activist,” sunk to a new depth of vulgarity by branding Nobel laureate Professor Yunus a “Haramzada”—a ba*tard— and openly calling for him to be kicked out of his wheelchair.   This is not activism. This is the filthy rhetoric of an #AwamiLeague terrorist. Stop dignifying her with the title of a rights campaigner; name her for what she is. Certain Western embassies and high commissions in Dhaka still roll out the red carpet for her at their so-called rights gatherings. Are these missions aware of how she publicly vilified a national icon and Nobel Prize winner? Continuing to treat this terrorist as a legitimate activist is a disgrace to every mission that hosts her. Extending diplomatic recognition and a prestigious platform to someone accused of such reprehensible conduct raises serious questions about their commitment to the very values they claim to uphold. Such shameful, cowardly thuggery directed at a national icon is utterly disgraceful and indefensible. It has no place in a civilised society. The government in Bangladesh has to take action against Islam for terrorising Prof Yunus.   It is welcome that the Bangladesh government has labelled the attackers of Professor Yunus “Awami terrorists” and pledged that they will face the full force of the law. Such thugs who disgrace Bangladesh’s name abroad must be held accountable without delay or leniency. @usembassydhaka
@SwedeninBD
@UKinBangladesh
@EUinBangladesh @FranceinBD
@NLinBangladesh

~A pitiable President who fails to understand the state~ He is the President of Bangladesh. Yet, in the face of such a tragic death, he is forgetting the responsibility that the state and the government bear for the safety of a citizen. As President, he should first acknowledge his failure in this regard. Only then can he hold society responsible; only then can he put the deceased teenager's family in the dock of accusations. But he is doing the exact opposite, consciously trying to conceal the state's responsibilities. The reason for this is that, mentally, he still lives in Thakurgaon; this man, coming from a mofussil town, still does not understand the state.

The "Legal Officer" post did not exist in the previous four PGA sessions. No public vacancy notice found. Under two years' experience against a five-year UN requirement. Khalilur Rahman owes Bangladesh an answer, not a spokesperson's line.

Local Buddhists and right-wing Hindu leaders in Baruapara, Maheshtala, just outside the Indian city of #Kolkata, have launched open protests against a #Muslim family simply for buying a house in the #Buddhist and #Hindu-majority locality.   In a video, a minor #Hindutva leader declares that a Muslim purchasing land in a Buddhist-Hindu majority area has triggered “chaos” in the locality, and branded it “Land Jihad.” This is the same toxic label Hindutva groups and BJP supporters have been routinely slapping on any Muslim land or property purchase in non-Muslim areas in the north-Indian BJP-ruled states.   Opposition to Muslims buying homes or shops in Hindu areas has been standard practice for nearly a decade, escalating in lockstep with the BJP’s rise across the Hindi belt. In virtually every BJP-ruled state, Hindutva outfits have threatened, harassed, and forced Muslim buyers to abandon their properties.   In quite a few instances in the BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat, Hindu right-wing groups staged sit-ins outside the main entrances of flats owned by Muslim families in Hindu-dominated housing societies. They engaged in continuous kirtans or recitations of the Hanuman Chalisa, apparently to harass and intimidate the Muslim residents. In most cases, the Muslim families were eventually forced to leave their homes and properties.   Now, five months after the BJP came to power in West Bengal, the same playbook is being rolled out. The state’s Muslims are being subjected to the same systematic communal oppression long inflicted on their co-religionists in north India.   Before the elections, Suvendu Adhikari openly declared that a BJP government—if it came to power— would work exclusively for Hindus and that “secularism” would cease to exist. That threat is now a policy in practice I West Bengal.   Muslims in Kolkata are being bluntly told by housing societies, agents, and brokers that they will not be allowed to buy or rent apartments, houses and lands in many residential complexes and prime localities—purely because of their faith. What was once occasional discrimination has become open, statewide exclusion.   With Suvendu Adhikari in power, West Bengal has turned into open season for Hindutva forces. They operate with total impunity.   Bangladeshi Hindutva voices who posture as defenders of Hindus know full well the discrimination Bengali Muslims face across the border under BJP rule in West Bengal. They also know that, despite being a religious minority, Hindus in Bangladesh do not face the same degree of state-backed communal repression.   Yet these same voices remain completely silent. Not one statement. Not one word of condemnation against the communal repression of Muslims in West Bengal or India.   Buddhists in Bangladesh should take particular note: their co-religionists in Maheshtala are actively joining Hindutva forces to block a Muslim family from buying a home in their neighbourhood—solely on the basis of religion.   #USCIRF

#Bangladesh’s version of #democracy bears little resemblance to the democratic ideal understood elsewhere. For decades, political power has remained trapped in a revolving door dominated by two rival dynastic families.   What is presented as democracy has too often amounted to the inheritance and exchange of political power between entrenched family establishments, leaving ordinary citizens with a remarkably narrow choice at the top.   The system of the country has been cynically described as “STD”—Sexually Transmitted Democracy: a crude but precise indictment of a politics where authority is bequeathed from one generation of the same families to the next, as if the nation itself were an inherited estate.

Little child Apratim was tragically murdered in #Bangladesh by some miscreants. Yet instead of allowing his death to be mourned with the seriousness and humanity it deserves, #Hindutva supporters in #India and #Bangladesh have seized upon it as propaganda against Bangladesh—and, more specifically, Bangladeshi #Muslims. The most disturbing part is the deliberate manipulation of his religious identity. Apratim was born into a Muslim family; his father is K.M. Firoz Shahriar and his mother is Dr. Nahida Begum. Yet dozens of social media posts have falsely portrayed him as Hindu, using his death as so-called “evidence” of an ongoing “Hindu genocide” in Bangladesh. This is not a simple case of misinformation. It is the calculated distortion of a human tragedy: erase the facts, manufacture a communal identity, inflame emotions, and then weaponise the distorted story to advance a predetermined Hindutva narrative. We have seen this playbook before. Following Sheikh Hasina’s fall, images of the home of Muslim cricketer Mashrafe were circulated as though they depicted an attack on Hindu cricketer Litton Das. The pattern is unmistakable: manipulate identity, strip away context, amplify outrage, and turn tragedy into communal propaganda. Apratim’s death deserves mourning—not manipulation, not appropriation, and certainly not to be weaponized for Hindutva propaganda.

Ayush Malik, a #Hindu man from Shamli, in #India’s Uttar Pradesh, spent years studying #Islam before voluntarily converting four years ago and adopting the name Mohammad Ali. A few months ago, he married Chandni Qureshi, a Muslim woman. His father threw him out of the family home for converting to Islam. With the backing of #Hindutva organisations, Ayush’s father then filed a police complaint alleging that Chandni and her family had forcibly converted his son. Police registered a forced-conversion case against Chandni’s family and others. Ayush said to the police that he had converted voluntarily. Police forcibly separated him from Chandni and took him back into his father’s custody. Indian media subsequently reported that Ayush had abandoned Islam and Chandni, and returned to Hinduism. But that account collapsed in court this week. Recently, a friend approached the Allahabad High Court, alleging that Ayush was being held against his will and seeking his release from his father’s family. When Ayush appeared before the court yesterday, he made his position unequivocally clear: he had converted to Islam voluntarily, wanted to remain Muslim, and wanted to return to Chandni. The High Court affirmed a basic constitutional principle: a 31-year-old adult has the right to choose and practise his religion, and his paternal family has no authority to dictate that choice or interfere with it. Ayush said he intends to spend the rest of his life as a Muslim under the name Mohammad Ali. He also disclosed that after being handed back to his father in June, he was pressured into telling the media that his conversion had been coerced and that he had “admitted his mistake.” According to his account, he had repeatedly told police that both his conversion and marriage were voluntary. Nevertheless, a criminal case was filed against Chandni’s family and he was separated from her. The episode raises serious questions about the forced-conversion case brought against Chandni’s family. Ayush’s own testimony in court directly contradicts the narrative that he was forcibly converted. It also highlights the danger of allowing familial pressure, ideological organisations and state authorities to override the expressed wishes of an adult citizen. What began as an allegation of “forced conversion” has instead exposed a far more troubling question: whether a Muslim convert can freely choose his faith and marriage in India when those choices collide with the wishes of his Hindu family and Hindutva activists. The court has now reaffirmed Ayush’s right to choose his own faith, identity and partner. He wants to return to Chandni and live openly as Mohammad Ali. The question now is whether the couple will be allowed to live in peace—or face renewed intimidation and harassment from right-wing Hindu groups who tried to override his choice.

#SuvenduAdhikari, the chief minister of West Bengal, said that had West Bengal not become part of #India, the Hindus living in the region would have suffered a fate similar to that of Bangladeshi Hindu monk Chinmoy Das.

Das has been in jail since 2024, facing multiple charges, including sedition. Adhikari’s argument cuts both ways. Muslims in #Bangladesh could equally argue that, had they remained within India after 1947, they might have faced bulldozing of legally constructed mosques, mob violence over allegations of possessing or consuming beef, and assaults by #Hindutva extremists forcing them to chant “#Jai Shri Ram.” After Sheikh Hasina’s fall in 2024, the Adhikari claimed that scared of their lives ten million Hindus were planning to flee to India. India kept its borders open, yet nothing remotely approaching such a mass migration occurred. Not even one or two thousand Bangladeshi Hindus crossed over into India then—so much for the claim of a mass exodus. In 2025, the chief minister claimed that ten million Bangladeshi Muslims were living illegally in India, including six million in West Bengal. A nationwide crackdown on illegal Bangladeshi Muslims followed. But, the number of those Muslims actually returning was nowhere near the millions claimed—reports put it in a few thousands. These figures expose the gap between political propaganda and reality. Claims about mass Hindu persecution in Bangladesh and millions of illegal Bangladeshi Muslims in India have been repeatedly inflated by the BJP to generate communal fear and serve Hindutva politics. If such claims are to be made, they should be backed by solid evidence—not slogans, speculation, or manufactured numbers.

On Monday night in Mestre, Italy, Bangladeshi actor Azmeri Haque Badhon was surrounded and violently assaulted by a group of men as she stood with her family, including her three-year-old nephew. They pelted her with eggs and cold drinks, grabbed and struck her in the face, and tried to force her to chant “Joy Bangla” and “Joy Bangabandhu”, slogans used by supporters of #SheikhHasina.   A three-year-old understands neither politics nor the meaning of “July" in the context of #Bangladesh. What they do understand is the tone of a voice—and, above all, the unmistakable fear in his aunt. On that Mestre sidewalk, Badhon and her nephew heard the men call themselves “soldiers of Bangabandhu (Sheikh Mujib).” Standing before this group were a woman and a small child. The men weighed their numbers and her isolation before attacking. No true soldier strikes only when they overwhelm the other side.   None of the attackers covered their faces or hid the video. They shared it proudly on social media, seeing their actions not as a crime but as an achievement. They filmed their own confession and released it, expecting applause, unaware that the footage would remain a lasting mark against them for several decades.   The party that once claimed to lead the independence struggle now peaks politically by mobbing a woman on a foreign sidewalk, manhandling her and pelting her with eggs.   The label the men tried to pin on the actress—“July militant”—is hardly new. For two years, Awami League leaders and supporters have disputed the #JulyRevolution death toll, dismissed videos as fabrications, called the uprising a “meticulous design,” and smeared the dead to make their deaths seem deserved. They joined police in firing on protesters, yet not one admitted wrongdoing. Forgiveness is not a one-way concession; it requires accountability. A party that denies its guilt has no grounds to seek or claim forgiveness.   The #AwamiLeague has little left to offer. Its only strength is its ability to use numbers to gang up on and attack a woman. It has no moral authority—only the spectacle of throwing eggs and recording it, as though such videos are the only achievements it can put on display.   A party does not die when it loses power; it dies when it destroys its own history. The Awami League did that. Elections offer another chance. For this party, there will be no next time.   One day, that three-year-old boy will grow up and watch the footage. He will see people attacking his aunt, one filming the scene on a mobile phone. The world, and generations to come, will see it too. Those Awami League men thought they were recording a victory, never realising they were documenting their own downfall—writing their own death warrants, with their own hands, willingly and with laughter.   Defeat can be honourable. True courage means standing firm, admitting wrongdoing, and facing judgment. The Awami League showed no such courage; the moment they lost, they fled the country.   The Awami League leaders who armed you and pushed you into street thuggery for 15 years fled the country after August 4, 2024, without looking back. When the government changed, you faced lawsuits and violent attacks, while your leaders comfortably issued statements from abroad. You are still throwing eggs at others in support of these leaders.   Those who perpetrated the genocide in Bangladesh in 1971 were ultimately defeated. Yet, they did not flee. They came to the Dhaka Race Course and surrendered in full view of everyone. They signed the surrender documents in front of the cameras. The world witnessed that scene.   After Hasina’s fall in 2024, you and your leaders did not even dare to face the consequences. You all slipped quietly out of the country instead. That wasn’t surrender—it was a coward’s escape.   You did not lose. Losing requires a certain measure of dignity. You simply ran away—quietly, desperately, and without the courage to face the consequences.

Indian freelance journalists Shaheen Khan and her colleague Nafisa Khan were dragged to Saket Police Station in #Delhi and caned them because one of them dared to ask a question to Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and #India’s home minister Amit Shah.   Bruises darkened Nafisa’s leg and Shaheen’s arm. Nafisa’s thigh, above the knee, was scored with raw red welts from the cane.   Their only “offence,” Shaheen said, was to ask the Delhi chief minister and India’s home minister a question. Then an officer demanded their names. When they identified themselves as Shaheen Khan and Nafisa Khan, she said, the assault intensified.   The police, she alleged, became markedly more aggressive once they realised that both were #Muslim, beating them with greater force and violence. For Shaheen, the message was unmistakable: their Muslim identity had transformed a question into a pretext for brutality. “We understood that being Muslim is a crime in India,” she said.   Shaheen said the police assault grew even more brutal after they learned that the two women were Muslim. If substantiated, the incident raises deeply disturbing questions about whether religious identity has become a trigger for police violence in India. It is yet another troubling indication of the vulnerability faced by Muslims—including women—under the #NarendraModi government, where allegations of discriminatory treatment and communal intimidation continue to cast a long shadow.   The episode lays bare a deeply disturbing communal climate in which being Muslim in India can itself become a basis for heightened vulnerability and discrimination.

About ten days ago, a century-old Hindu temple in Narowal district, #Pakistan (130 km from Lahore), was destroyed. A minority rights group blamed a group of Muslims; officials said the dilapidated structure had partially collapsed years earlier and fully crumbled due to rain. Pakistan’s Minority Affairs Minister stated there was no evidence of any communal attack on the temple and pledged its reconstruction.   Indian media, right-wing Hindu group Bajrang Dal, and the foreign ministry strongly condemned the incident, demanded rebuilding, and fuelled social-media outrage. This stands in stark contrast to India’s response in 1992, when the #Hindutva-led demolition of the sixteenth-century #BabriMasjid in Ayodhya was met by the government and Hindu groups with a blunt dismissal of foreign protests as unwarranted interference in #India’s internal affairs.   Some ordinary citizens—not the Pakistani state—were perhaps responsible for the destruction Narowal temple. But in India, especially BJP-ruled states, Hindutva activists and authorities have demolished thousands of #mosques, madrasas, Islamic shrines, and Muslim orphanages. Unofficial figures cite 537 such structures demolished in Uttarakhand state alone over the past one year as “illegal,” despite Muslim documentation.   Twenty-seven years after a Hindu mob demolished the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India’s Supreme Court awarded the disputed site to Hindus, citing the religious belief that the Hindu god Ram had been born there, while acknowledging that there was no conclusive evidence that a temple had been demolished to construct the mosque. Similar claims now target Mathura’s Shahi Masjid (Krishna’s birthplace) and Darul Uloom Deoband (alleged Shiva temple ruins).   Historian Richard Eaton estimated roughly 80 temples vandalized under medieval Muslim rule; Hindutva leaders claim 30,000 and threaten systematic reclamation. The rising Hindutva ideology is driving ongoing mosque demolitions aimed at erasing Islam and establishing a Hindu nation.   Historian Richard Eaton estimates that roughly 80 temples were vandalised under medieval Muslim rule—a figure dwarfed by Hindutva leaders’ sweeping claim of 30,000. That inflated narrative has become a potent weapon for Hindu nationalist politics, fuelling demands for the systematic “reclamation” of mosques.   They call for the demolition of thousands of mosques in India, yet react with outrage when even a single Hindu temple in Pakistan is damaged or destroyed. The stark double standard exposes a deeply selective outrage over religious heritage.