AN OPEN LETTER To the Head of Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh Dr. Muhammad Yunus

By Progga News Desk --
18 September, 2025

Progga News Desk, NY, USA:
The Honorable Dr. Muhammad Yunus,
Welcome to the United Nations and to the City of New York!

We hope you will receive strong support from the international community to advance Bangladesh’s economy and guide the country toward a better democratic governance free from corruption, cronyism, repression of the opposition, and persecution of minorities—the very maladies that have burdened the nation for decades.

When you took the oath of office on August 8, 2024, we, along with the international community of civilized nations, expected you to uphold and strengthen Bangladesh’s foundational principles of secular democracy and equality for all citizens, regardless of religion, gender, or racial identity, as enshrined in the nation’s original Constitution.

Given your international stature and the humanistic vision, you often share in your lectures around the world, it was only natural for us—and indeed for anyone—to hope that under your leadership Bangladesh would emerge as a model of inclusive politics, a truly secular democracy, and a society marked by interreligious harmony. This expectation was rooted in the promise of the “Student Coordinators” of the July uprising, who, by your own admission, entrusted you with the responsibility of helping them realize their vision of a society free from all forms of discrimination, a vision also embodied in the very organization you mentored: Boishamya Birodhi Chhatra Andolan (Anti-Discrimination Student Movement).

But, during the past year of your tenure, your government has failed to adopt policies that could bring that noble vision closer to reality. The worst victims of this failure are Bangladesh’s religious and ethnic minorities, along with the country’s fragile secular democracy. Under your watch, and in blatant contradiction to the pledges you and Army Chief of Staff General Walker Uz Zaman made to the minority leaders—that they would live as equal citizens, totally free of discrimination and persecution—hateful Islamist groups have been allowed to unleash terror on the minorities, particularly Hindus, with absolute impunity. Over the past year, we have watched in great horror as the country has unmistakably veered toward Islamic radicalization.

These religion monger Islamists, emboldened by your government’s protection, openly preach that non-Muslims are expendable. They have turned that ideology into action—systematically persecuting minorities, driving them from their homes, their schools, and their country. The evidence is overwhelming:

According to media reports and documentation by the Bangladesh Hindu Bouddha Christian Oikya Parishad (BHBCOP), Islamists committed 2,442 hate crimes and atrocities against Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians—many of whom are indigenous peoples—between August 4, 2024, and August 4, 2025. These included 50 (fifty) murders, 29 mass rapes, and 87 incidents of temple destruction and arson. Reports of new atrocities continue to pour in daily.
Due to rampant sexual violence, in many regions, minority girls have been forced to discontinue their education.
Temple destruction has become routine. In one shocking example, the government itself demolished a temple in Khilkhet, Dhaka, bulldozing its deities along with the structure.
Your administration has deliberately ignored repeated requests made by Bangladesh’s well-known minority rights organization, Bangladesh Hindu Bouddha Christian Oikya Parishad (BHBCOP), to form a Minority Commission along with the six others that you formed, to listen to their concerns and address the existential threat they are facing, but you did not, as if they do not matter.
None of the 79 Secretaries in the ministries belong to minority communities.
Among the 25 recently appointed justices, no one comes from a minority background.
Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das was imprisoned for demanding justice for persecuted minorities, denied legal representation, and falsely implicated in sedition and multiple murder cases (The Economic Times, May 5, 2025).
Minorities are frequently mobbed, arrested, and jailed on fabricated charges of blasphemy.
Hundreds of minority officers and educators, including Vice Chancellors Dr. Anupam Sen and Dr. Satya Prasad Majumder have been forced to resign. Professor Kushal Baran Chakraborty’s promotion was blocked after he was humiliated in orchestrated mob violence (bdnews24.com, December 7, 2024; The Daily Star, July 5, 2025).
On May 22, 2025, in Abhoynagar, Jessore, Islamists looted twenty Hindu houses, injuring ten people in the rampage.
On July 26, 2025, an estimated 600 Islamists attacked Aladapur, Gangachara (bdnews24.com, July 30, 2025).
Islamists have threatened to slaughter every member of the Vaishnav sect of Hinduism (ISKCON) unless the government bans the organization (Sangbad Pratidin, November 15, 2024).
On November 6, 2024, armed forces and police jointly brutalized Hindus in Hazari Golli, Chittagong, after they protested a derogatory Facebook post by a local trader labeling ISKCON a "terrorist group." Authorities destroyed CCTV footage to cover up the violence, then arrested 89 Hindu victims instead of the perpetrators (bdnews24.com, November 6, 2024).
On December 24, 2024, 17 Christian houses were set ablaze while residents attended Christmas Eve services (American Tribune, December 31, 2024; Times of India, December 27, 2024).
On September 20, 2024, 200 houses belonging to religious minority Indigenous peoples in Dighinala, Chittagong Hill Tracts, were burned down and four people killed (The Daily Star, September 19-20, 2024). Atrocities such as these are being reported daily, not only against Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians, but also against journalists, artists, moderate Muslims who oppose the Islamists, Sufi Muslims, Ahmadiyya Muslims, and Bauls (mystics), and are being widely reported by the international media as well as social media in real time.

Yet your government has taken no effective measures to stop this violence. Instead, your spokespersons have attempted to excuse these attacks as "reprisals"-alleging that minorities are targeted because they support the deposed secular-democratic Awami League. This claim is deeply troubling for two reasons: first, it amounts to covering for the Islamists who commit atrocities against the minorities in pursuit of their stated goal-transforming Bangladesh into a monolithic Islamic republic akin to Afghanistan-and second, for these attacks to be genuinely "retaliatory," nine out of ten victims, including destroyed places of worship, would need to be Muslim supporters of the Awami League. That is demonstrably not the case. Honorable Chief Adviser, not only have you allowed the fanatic Islamists to brutalize Bangladesh's religious and ethnic minorities with total impunity you have also enabled them to dismantle the very foundations of secular democracy in the country by taking the following actions:

Immediately upon assuming power, you released from jail hundreds of convicted Islamic terrorists including those affiliated with Al Qaeda and ISIS among them the murderer of Bangladeshi American scientist and writer Abhijit Roy. You did so to strengthen their hands, so they could assist the Islamists who carried out the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971 in seizing control of the country through the democratic process, just as the Islamic Salvation Front did in Algeria or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
By deliberately delaying the parliamentary election, you have helped the Islamists consolidate their political grip on the country. These Islamists not only perpetrated the Genocide of 1971 in collaboration with the Pakistani army-killing three million unarmed Bengalis, forcing 200,000 women into sex slavery, and driving nearly ten million people to flee for their lives they also categorically reject women as co-equal partners of men, women's equal right to education and work, the right of non-Muslims to coexist with equal rights, music, art, democracy, and any man-made constitution as the supreme law of the land. Instead, they demand governance through Majlish-e-Sura and the imposition of sharia law.
You have taken every possible measure to exclude relatively progres- sive political parties from the forthcoming elections-citing their alleged misdeeds in recent years as if those who orchestrated the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971, or who carried out massacres such as the Logang Massacre of April 10, 1992 (when 600 or more minority indigenous peoples were executed by the paramilitary BDR in joint action with Muslim settlers, a crime that prompted a letter of grave concern by 17 U.S. legislators to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia on November 13, 1992), or the grenade massacre of August 21, 2004, killing 26 political opponents do not themselves deserve exclusion from politics.

These actions taken by your Interim Government guarantee a total Islamist victory in the forthcoming parliamentary election, which has been foreshadowed by their landslide victory in the recent Dhaka University and Jahangirnagar University student government elections. Their victory, in turn, will plunge Bangladesh into utter chaos, as predicted by international media and warned by noted South Asia experts.

At least two dozen respected international outlets have expressed deep concern about the radicalization of Bangladesh under your watch-includ- ing: As Bangladesh Reinvents Itself, Islamist Hard-Liners See an Opening (The New York Times, April 1, 2025); Is Bangladesh the Next Afghanistan? (American Enterprise Institute, March 18, 2025); The country could fall prey to Islamic extremism, as Pakistan has (The Economist, August 8, 2024); and Bangladesh is a South Asian Time Bomb (The Japan Times, Septem- ber 3, 2025).

Please recall-when the Islamists ruled Bangladesh from 2001 to 2006, the country resembled a semi-Taliban state. Today, with the infusion of transnational Islamic terrorist groups. they are far more powerful than they were in the 1990s and early 2000s. The media headlines of that era serve as stark reminders:

"Bangladesh: A Cocoon of Terror." (The Far Eastern Economic Review, April 4, 2002).
"In Bangladesh, as in Pakistan, a Worrisome Rise in Islamic Extrem- ism." (The Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2002).
"Rape and Torture Empty the Villages." (The Guardian, July 21, 2003). "Eleven of the Same Family Roasted Alive." (The Bangladesh Observ- er).

"Bangladesh's Religious Minorities: Safe Only in the Departure Lounge." (The Economist, November 29, 2003).

"The Night of the Lost Pins-Muslim Men Raped 200 Hindu Women in One Night at a Single Spot in Char Fashion, Bhola." (The Daily Star, November 16, 2001).

“Intolerance Has Taken Hold in Bangladesh,” Congressman Joseph Crowley. (The Daily Star, January 13, 2004).

"225 Out of 228-or 98.7% of the Reported Cases of Rape Belong to Minority Communities." (The Daily Janakantha, February 17, 2002). There is no reason to think they will act differently this time around. In fact, some of the convicted Islamic terrorists whom you released upon taking the oath of office on August 8, 2024, called their associates to action to wipe out secular democracy in Bangladesh as well as destroy the territorial integrity of neighboring countries. Thus, by promoting them, you have, in fact, put secular democracy and stability in both Bangladesh and beyond its borders at serious risk.

Through this open letter, we wish to firmly state that we want all state and non-state actors who have ever engaged in such heinous crimes-extraju- dicial killing, political assassination, involuntary disappearance of political opponents, genocide and massacres, and looting of public funds, to be brought to justice and meted with stringent punishment. But the timeline cannot be determined arbitrarily; anyone involved in these crimes since March 25, 1971 must be brought to justice and excluded from the forthcom- ing election, if any party is excluded at all—"The past is not dead, it is not even past" (William Faulkner).

Since your government has clearly failed to take that road, we fervently urge you to immediately take the following steps for the sake of the well-be- ing of the citizens of Bangladesh as well as secular democratic nations around the globe:

Like your predecessors, create an even playing field for a free and fair inclusive election-in other words, allow every political party of the country to participate in the forthcoming parliamentary election scheduled for February 2026, and let the voters decide who they wish to govern the country.
Address the existential threat facing the country's approximately 20 million religious and ethnic minorities by immediately holding a dialogue with the leaders of all political parties and making them agree, as they have on various other issues, to tackle this serious problem during the next parliament's first session by enacting a comprehensive Minority Protection Act. Such an Act must include a Hate Speech and Crime law like the U.S. has, and a Separate Electorate system for the minorities with 60 seats allocated for them, among other provisions we submitted a draft Minority Protection Act to the previous government and would be happy to share it with you on demand.

iii. Declare Zero Tolerance for sectarian violence; and

Start prosecuting the persecutors of minorities who have almost never been tried in Bangladesh except in rare, highly publicized cases thus sending a loud and clear message that minorities are not an expendable commodity.

Honorable Chief Adviser, by taking these actions, you can not only save Bangladesh's fast-dwindling minorities who, according to projections, may face extinction by 2046 (Dhaka Tribune, November 20, 2016) if the ongoing campaign of religious and ethnic cleansing is not stopped once and for all, but also enhance your international standing as a Nobel Laureate for Peace. In addition, you will help position Bangladesh as a respected member of the community of civilized nations, where minorities are empowered politically and economically rather than being driven to extinction through sustained violence.

Thank you for your consideration and decisive action.

Sincerely,

Members, Directors & Officers of

Bangladeshi Hindu, Buddhist & Christian Unity Council, USA

New York City

September 20, 2025