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As we speak, the political situation in Bangladesh is deteriorating for the Hindu community. Millions of acres of Hindu land has been confiscated and redefined as enemy property. According to Shipan Kumer Basu, the President of the World Hindu Struggle Committee, “Local land grabber Manik Miah has occupied the properties of Ballabh Das in Majigacha village of Kachua Upazila in Chandpur district.”

He claimed that 300 Muslims accompanied by musical instruments came in order to destroy the Ballabh Das family home: “They looted many goods such as cash, gold ornaments, silver ornaments, bronze, etc. Now, the family has no place to pass the night. They lost everything except the clothes on their backs. The family asked, why do we suffer such cruel attacks against us? We are Hindus. That is our only crime. Why can’t we also live in an independent Bangladesh while Muslims are permitted to peacefully coexist with Hindus in India?”

According to Bangladesh Sishu Adhikar Forum (BSAF), between January and March of this year, over 55 Bangladeshi children were raped per month with 66 being raped in March alone. He claimed that of the 176 children that were raped over these past 3 months, 15 were between age 1 to 6 years of age and 37 were between 7 to 12 years of age. Although these statistics are low by American standards, Basu stated that these statistics on child rape exceed what existed in the past in the country, emphasizing that the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East has had an adverse effect on the situation in his country. He noted that the rate of Hindu girls who are raped is much higher than the official statistics for the general population and that the rape of Hindu women is generally not recorded in the official records.

“Rape is a heinous violent crime,” the Bangladesh Minority Council noted. “It is used as a war tool through which the invaders subjugate and humiliate the conquered population. A judicial commission concluded that over 200 Hindu women were raped following the 2001 parliamentary election. Rape and other sexual violations of minor girls belonging to the Hindu community, mainly in rural areas, remain rampant. In the conservative society of rural Bangladesh, when a girl is violated in a village, the family is left with no choice but to migrate to India. In addition, in rural areas, pressure to convert to Islam is increasing with every year. In many cases, local authorities ignore such activities because they themselves believe that if they can convert a non-Muslim to Islam, then they will be rewarded after death. This belief has caused an upsurge in the religious conversion of Hindu minors and sometimes even of entire families to Islam.”

Within Bangladesh, many Muslims hold negative beliefs about the Hindu population. According to Basu, many Muslims in Bangladesh claim that the Hindus are not patriotic, alleging that they have never died for the country nor fought a war of liberation. However, he emphasized that such statements are bigoted and simply not true: “Jagatiyoti Das was the first to be called Birshrestha (Best Hero/Fighter) of Bangladesh’s War of Liberation. At the time, Jagatiyoti’s group had 42 people. The group had some freedom fighters operating in Kalyanpur. They fired at the Pakistani Army in Shalla, Ghangia in order to help the freedom fighters in Subal Das’s team.” He claimed that by claiming that the Hindus are not patriotic and merely fled to India, the authorities are encouraging bigoted beliefs against the Hindus in Bangladesh, which can be used to encourage their silent ethnic cleansing from the country as the world turns a blind eye to it.

“The Awami League wants to destroy the Hindu culture in Bangladesh,” he emphasized. “It is very sad that Bangladesh and West Bengal celebrate the Bengali New Year on different dates. But why? The answer is that Sheikh Hasina wants to cleanse Bangladesh of Hindu culture. Her supporters are destroying temples, idols and other symbols of Hindu culture within the country. She has formed a covert alliance with ISIS in order to rid the country of the Hindu minority by slowly ethnically cleansing them from the country via murders, rapes, and looting and land seizures. However, while Sheikh Hasina is forming an alliance with radical Islamists, we Hindus protest against this and seek to establish a secular country who peacefully coexists with other religious groups, such as Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Jews. We want to be a model for the world. Therefore, this year, we hope that you will speak out about the plight of the Hindus in Bangladesh.”

The post Bangladeshi Hindu Human Rights Activist: “Muslims celebrate destruction of Hindu home” appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Vol au-dessus d'un nid de coucou est un film politique. Là est sans doute son plus grand mérite : Milos Forman a réussi ce tour de force de nous présenter, deux heures durant, la vie d'un hôpital, de telle sorte que tout ce qui est thérapeutique y apparaît dans sa juste dimension : thérapeutique de (...) / Cinéma, Santé, Science, Psychanalyse - 1976/04

The United States is pursuing a worst-of-both-worlds mix of hawkish confrontation and strategic retrenchment.

Dès 1890 les gisements cuprifères du Katanga, aujourd'hui connus dans le monde entier, suscitèrent un extraordinaire enthousiasme, notamment en Afrique du Sud. Les grandes sociétés surent immédiatement prendre les mesures nécessaires pour organiser une exploitation rationnelle. Le cuivre du Katanga (...) / Burundi, Rwanda - 1959/07

The United States has no intention of using its firepower to halt the mass killing of civilians through conventional means, degrade Syria’s military forces, or to challenge Russia and Iran’s military positions is Syria.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro de printemps de Politique étrangère (n°1/2018). Hans Stark, secrétaire général du Comité d’étude des relations franco-allemandes (Cerfa) de l’Ifri, propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Patrick Moreau, L’Autre Allemagne. Le réveil de l’extrême droite (Vendémiaire, 2017, 304 pages).

Fondée en 2013, l’Alternative pour l’Allemagne (AfD) a obtenu 12,6 % des voix aux élections législatives de septembre 2017. Présente dans 14 des 16 chambres régionales outre-Rhin, l’AfD représente aujourd’hui une force marquante de la vie politique en Allemagne. D’où l’urgence de mieux comprendre ce parti dans un pays qui ne connaît plus guère le chômage, dont l’économie tourne à plein régime et qui, de surcroît, a longtemps semblé échapper à la montée des partis populistes et d’extrême droite.

Germaniste, chercheur au CNRS et à l’université de Strasbourg, Patrick Moreau est un expert reconnu de l’extrême droite allemande et l’ouvrage le confirme. L’auteur rappelle d’abord que le phénomène d’extrême droite, bien que marginal jusqu’en 2013, a toujours existé dans l’Allemagne de l’après-guerre, et esquisse une courte histoire des différents groupuscules nazillons qui se sont développés en République fédérale depuis les années 1960. L’auteur réfléchit ensuite à l’impact de la réunification sur l’évolution de l’extrême droite allemande, au regard du fait que nationalisme et xénophobie ont reçu davantage d’écho dans les Länder de l’ex-RDA que dans ceux de l’Ouest – sans doute pour des raisons liées à la fois à la façon dont les dirigeants de la RDA ont traité l’héritage du national-socialisme, et au choc de l’unité allemande.

Patrick Moreau revient ensuite sur la genèse et les mutations de l’AfD. Il rappelle que ce parti regroupait à son début des forces politiques qu’on peut qualifier de « national-libérales ». Mais deux ans après sa naissance, l’AfD change d’orientation, en s’ouvrant à des acteurs issus des milieux nationaux-conservateurs. Depuis ­2016-2017, ces derniers sont de plus en plus concurrencés par des militants que Moreau qualifie de « nationaux-­völkisch », et qu’il classe sans hésiter à l’extrême droite. Il appuie cette thèse, largement partagée par les politologues allemands, en analysant les fluctuations du personnel dirigeant de l’AfD depuis 2015 – avec l’éviction de son fondateur Bernd Lucke –, ainsi que les liens que délégués et députés de l’AfD entretiennent avec l’extrême droite dure (notamment le Parti national-démocrate – NPD – et le mouvement « identitaire », puis le mouvement Pegida). Il passe aussi en revue les positions prises par ses principaux leaders, qui montrent aussi des tendances propices à la radicalisation.

La dernière partie de l’ouvrage est consacrée à l’évolution de l’AfD dans le contexte politique allemand des années 2015-2017, et au bénéfice que ce parti a su tirer de la vague migratoire de 2015-2016. Moreau revient notamment sur les succès électoraux que l’AfD a connu aux diverses élections des Länder, qui lui ont permis de s’ancrer sans doute durablement à l’échelle régionale, et notamment en Allemagne de l’Est où ce parti est dorénavant élu par un ­électeur sur quatre.

Patrick Moreau n’a pas pu dans ces pages tenir compte des résultats des élections législatives. Mais ces dernières ne sauraient constituer une surprise pour le lecteur. Elles confirment plutôt une tendance, hélas lourde. Pour comprendre le phénomène AfD, l’ouvrage de Patrick Moreau, précis et détaillé, écrit avec beaucoup de distance par rapport à l’objet étudié et sans la moindre approche moralisante, est incontournable.

Hans Stark

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At the height of World War II, Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, argued that the United States had amassed such wealth and power that the twentieth century would come to be known simply as “the American Century.” His prediction proved prescient: despite being challenged for supremacy by Nazi Germany and, later, the Soviet Union, the United States prevailed against its adversaries. By the turn of the millennium, its position as the most powerful and influential state in the world appeared unimpeachable. As a result, the twentieth century was marked by the dominance not just of a particular country but also of the political system it helped spread: liberal democracy. 

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