Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights 2010 www.HAFsite.org May 25, 2011 © Hindu American Foundation 2011 “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article 1 “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self. This, in brief, is the rule of dharma. Yielding to desire and acting differently, one becomes guilty of adharma.” Mahabharata XII: 113, 8 “Thus, trampling on every privilege and everything in us that works for privilege, let us work for that knowledge which will bring the feeling of sameness towards all mankind.” Swami Vivekananda, “The Complete works of Swam Vivekananda, Vol 1, p. 429 "All men are brothers; no one is big, no one is small. All are equal." Rig Veda, 5:60:5 © Hindu American Foundation 2011 © Hindu American Foundation 2011 Endorsements of Hindu American Foundation's Seventh Annual Report Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights 2010 "As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism and the co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, I applaud the hard work of the Hindu American Foundation in producing their annual Human Rights Report. The first step in addressing the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities is shedding light on these abuses - and the report does just that." U.S. Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA) "As the founder and former co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, I know that the work of the Hindu American Foundation is vital to chronicle the international human rights of Hindus every year. The 2010 report provides important information to members of Congress, and I look forward to continuing to working with HAF to improve the human rights of Hindus around the world." U.S. Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) “I support the Hindu American Foundation’s devoted efforts toward bringing attention to religious freedom across the globe. As a member of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, I commend the work being done by this organization spreading awareness of this issue to the international community.” U.S. Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) © Hindu American Foundation 2011 Hindu American Foundation Board of Directors Nikhil N. Joshi, Esq., M.B.A. Mihir Meghani, M.D. Aseem R. Shukla, M.D. Swaminathan Venkataraman, M.B.A. Managing Director and Legal Counsel Suhag A. Shukla, Esq. (Co-editor) Senior Director Sheetal D. Shah (Co-editor) Director Samir Kalra, Esq. Associate Director Jay Kansara Office Administrator Zoila McDowell Executive Council Rishi Bhutada Pawan Deshpande Arvind Chandrakantan, M.D. Pooja Deopura Sachi Lamb Padma Kuppa Human Rights Coordinator Ramesh N. Rao, Ph.D. (Author) The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) is an advocacy and human rights group providing a progressive Hindu American voice. The Foundation interacts with and educates leaders in public policy, academia, media, and the public at large about Hinduism and global issues concernings Hindus, such as religious liberty, the portrayal of Hinduism, hate speech, hate crimes, and human rights. By promoting the Hindu and American ideals of understanding, tolerance, and pluralism, HAF stands strong against hate, discrimination, defamation, and terror. The Hindu American Foundation is not affiliated with any religious or political organizations or entities. HAF seeks to serve Hindu Americans across all sampradayas (Hindu religious traditions) regardless of race, color, national origin, citizenship, caste, gender, sexual orientation, age, and/or disability. © Hindu American Foundation 2011 Acknowledgements This is the seventh HAF annual Hindu human rights report. Discrimination against groups and communities in nation states is usually presented in the context of some version of state-sponsored, state-abetted, or state-countenanced discrimination. While that still continues to be the main focus of this report, we also acknowledge that in many instances non-state actors create conditions in a country or region that cannot be controlled despite the best intentions of the state, as it seems in Afghanistan, where now there is merely a handful of Hindu families left to struggle in a hostile, violent state where the writ of the legitimate government is limited to the borders of Kabul.i It is also difficult to ignore certain situations where race, ethnicity, and religion are intertwined. Attacks against a particular group because of its ethnicity, for example, may also be fueled by its religious identity or vice versa. Thus, the case of Sri Lanka presented a major dilemma. Was the LTTE terrorist group, which was defeated by the Sri Lankan national army after 33 years of conflict, a Tamil group or a Hindu group? Was the Sri Lankan response, which some allege included war crimes, against Hindus and Tamils or just a terrorist group? Cognizant of these complexities, this report not only presents a detailed account of events and conditions in countries and regions where attacks against Hindus are of primary concern – Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), Fiji, and Trinidad and Tobago – but also lists another group of countries and regions where there are significant number of Hindus and which have become hotspots of ethnic, racial, and other forms of discrimination. Saudi Arabia continues to be on the U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) list of “countries of particular concern,” and just as the USCIRF has expressed frustration at the lack of progress in that country, HAF too bemoans the lack of any kind of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia. USCIRF said in its 2009 report that “… the Saudi government persists in banning all forms of public religious expression other than that of the government’s own interpretation of one school of Sunni Islam and even interferes with private religious practice.”ii That this state of affairs is countenanced by the nations of the world, including the United States, underscores once again the inconsistencies in responses to human rights abuses. As this report did last year, Afghanistan has been included, not in the main section of the report, but in the section titled “Hotspots.” © Hindu American Foundation 2011 As in the past, numerous grass-roots organizations were involved in collecting data about the violation of human rights of Hindu minorities, and HAF thanks them for sharing the information they have collected. Chief among these organizations are the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM) and Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council USA (BHBCUC-USA) – organizations that have been at the forefront of publicizing the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh; “Odhikar” – a human rights organization in Bangladesh doing yeoman work on publicizing human rights abuses in the country; the Indo-American Kashmir Forum and the Kashmir Taskforce – which have worked to bring the attention of the United States government and media to the plight of Kashmiri Hindus; Panun Kashmir – working tirelessly to recover the lost properties and homes of Hindus forced to leave the Kashmir Valley; Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) – working for the human rights of Hindu minorities in Malaysia; Global Human Rights Defense (GHRD) – seeking to educate European media and government about the status of human rights worldwide; and Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) – which keeps track of human rights abuses in Asia. HAF acknowledges the work of global human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Freedom House, and Human Rights Watch in bringing to our attention the denial of human rights around the world. Also, important historical information and contemporary updates were obtained from the U.S. Department of State’s annual reports on religious freedom and human rights, and the USCIRF annual reports. Our thanks to the Hindu Vivek Kendra for the extensive media archives covering Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka that continue to provide us easy access to media reports and other archival data. Ramesh Rao, Ph.D. © Hindu American Foundation 2011 © Hindu American Foundation 2011 Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora: A Survey of Human Rights – 2010 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The human rights of Hindu citizens are consistently violated in eight countries and one state in India where Hindus constitute a minority: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Fiji, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Trinidad and Tobago. This report documents the ongoing violations of human rights in these countries. HINDUS ACROSS THE DIASPORA • Hindus, numbering nearly one billion, constitute the third largest religious group in the world. • Hinduism is one of the oldest surviving religions with its origins tracing back to at least the third millennium BCE. • Hindus are pluralistic in their beliefs and accept the myriad means of worship and prayer available to human beings seeking spiritual enlightenment. • Hindus in South Asia, and many of the twenty million Hindus living outside of India, are subject to discrimination, terror, murder and other forms of violence, forced conversions, ethnic cleansing, temple destruction, socio-political ostracization, and disenfranchisement. In some countries, fundamentalists from other religions advance a discriminatory and non-inclusive agenda, and promote hatred of religious and ethnic minorities in league with politicians and other government officials. PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BANGLADESH • In 1947, Hindus constituted nearly 30% of Bangladesh’s population. By 1991, an estimated 20 million Hindus were “missing” from Bangladesh. Today, Hindus comprise less than 10% of the population.iii • Hindus of Bangladesh continue to be victims of ethnic cleansing waged by Islamic fundamentalists that include daily acts of murder, rape, kidnapping, temple Executive Summary i © Hindu American Foundation 2011 destruction, and physical intimidation. • Human rights activists and journalists continue to be harassed and intimidated. • Forty acts of murder, rape, kidnapping, temple destruction, and land grabs targeting Hindus have been recorded in this report.