The Editor of the popular English daily ‘Dhaka Tribune‘ attempted to whitewash the atrocities committed against the minority community amid reports of Islamist onslaught against Hindus in Bangladesh.
In an article published on Friday and titled ’10 things India needs to know about Bangladesh’, Zafar Sobhan rationalised attacks on Hindus as an repercussions of anarchy and lawlessness in the country. The propaganda artist claimed, “Hindus are not in danger. Yes, in the initial chaos following Sheikh Hasina’s fleeing, there was a short period of anarchy and lawlessness, and, yes, unfortunately, some of those who were targeted were members of the Hindu community.”
The Editor of the Dhaka Tribune laid the foundation to justify the targeted attacks as ‘regular events’ in the context of the Indian subcontinent. Zafar Sobhan wrote, “At times like this, those targeted are often the most powerless and as we all know in south Asia, minorities sadly always remain vulnerable.”
As typical of those whitewashing atrocities on Bangladeshi Hindus, the Editor of the Dhaka Tribune was quick to dismiss violence orchestrated by violent Muslim mobs as the aftermath of political targeting. “But the notion that Hindus were the subject of some kind of pogrom and that their targeting and dispossession was in fact an integral prong of the revolution is a fiction,” Zafar shrewdly negated the religious motivation behind the attacks on Hindus.
Previously, a similar strategy was used by the UK’s national broadcaster BBC, which relied on selective ‘fact-checking’, false equivalence and cherry-picking to downplay attacks on the Hindu community. Zafar was seen siding with the perpetrators and peddling the misleading narrative of Muslims ‘protecting’ temples from being attacked without specifying the religious affiliation of those endangering the Hindu religious sites.
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