ICC Note:

The recently released 2017 Annual Report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom included how Christians in Bangladesh are facing persecution. According to the report, Christians often face discrimination, especially under the country’s blasphemy laws as well as when witnessing to local Muslims. Another issue detailed by the USCIRF report was arson attacks against Christian homes. According to the report, Christian and tribal homes are targeted for arson attacks so that their properties can be stolen or bought at unfair prices. 

05/02/2017 Bangladesh (Mission Network News) – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released their 2017 Annual Report last week. The report described religious freedom violations in 37 countries, and made recommendations for the U.S. government to address them. Bangladesh, a 90 percent Muslim-majority nation, was included in the report.

Since the nation’s general elections 2014, Bangladesh has seen an increase in extremist activity against religious minorities, including from ISIS and Jamaatul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB). There’s also the widespread practice of ‘land-grabbing’ by government officials targeting minorities.

Peter Mazumder, National Co-Director of Asian Access Bangladesh says, “Last year in December, purposefully, government political leaders burned all the Christian houses [on an area of land], and also tribal groups that are not Christians. So 7,500 have been lost, burned by the police.”

Land-grabbing through arson is not uncommon in Bangladesh, according to the USCIRF report. Mazumder says government officials desired this land the Christians and other minorities were living on, and now wants to relocate them onto different lands. But the Bangladeshi Christians don’t want to move, especially because many work at sugar mills near their old homes. They are currently living in refugee camps. The government won’t give the Christians permission to rebuild on their old land and they can’t be given funds from outside sources to rebuild.

Bangladesh also has an anti-blasphemy law in place, which is often used by Muslims against minorities. And while there is no anti-conversion law in Bangladesh, Christians are intimidated away from witnessing at the local level.

“As a Christian, we face challenges, especially when we share the Gospel. If we don’t share the Gospel, we are okay. But when we share the Gospel, we are threatened by the Muslims. They’re identifying the leaders who are actively doing the evangelism. They wrote all the names, and last year they killed our three pastors…. They come as a spy, they come and say, ‘We would like to hear about Jesus. Jesus is our prophet.’”

This makes outreach in Bangladesh often difficult, since evangelists and Christians can’t always tell if someone is asking about the Bible with a searching heart, or to entrap them.

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