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INTRODUCTION: THE UNSEEN LIVES AMONG US

‘I’m not saying the people fighting them. I’m saying the civil population. Every single man, woman and child is not safe in Baluchistan. Every mother weeps when their child leaves the front door’

• Mehran Marri, Baluchistan’s representative at the UNHCR

‘It’s very difficult to stay safe. The police are not organized so there is always a risk. Even when we ask for protection, the police tell us: ‘We are not organized, so how can we protect you?’

• Ahamad Tabshir Choudhury, from the Ahmadiyya Jama’at of Bangladesh

‘Sometimes you can see the scar, the physical scar, and you see this is a genocidal crime. But how do you define genocidal crime when the scar lasts year after year? Because it is inside your mind. You live and die every moment… you live the horror and nightmare every single day’

• Dhiman Deb Choudhury, President of the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM)

These are quotes from SADF’s podcasts with members of minorities in Bangladesh (Hindu, inter alias, and Ahmadiyya) and with a representative of the Baloch district in Pakistan. Three very different groups that have in common their plight against systemic violence, repression, exploitation, and impunity. In Bangladesh, the greatest threat comes from bottom-up communal violence (and state inaction); in Pakistan, it’s state-sponsored terrorism. But these are just snippets of a much greater story, for across South Asia, minorities often live under siege. While the world barely whispers. And while the international community fails its duties repeatedly.

There are many reports, documents and statistics about the tragedies of being a minority in South Asia. Hyperlinks at the end of the text. However, direct voices and depictions hold a special power to create empathy and help us visualize much more vividly what’s at stake here – human lives and human stories of mind-boggling struggle, strength, and sorrow. So, although we’ll provide relevant facts and figures for context, it’s all about letting the survivors speak.

Quote from. Mr. Mehran Marri, during SADF Podcast on the Baloch mironity in Pakistan. Image created by SADF’s Custom Chat GPT

PART 1 – ON CONTEXT

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As we all know, it all started at partition. SADF’s Custom Chat GPT, whose thread will guide us for this section, describes it thus: ‘In 1947, as India and Pakistan were carved from British India, millions crossed newly drawn borders in search of safety, identity, or simply survival. But not everyone had a clear place to go—or a state that would claim them fully. For some communities, Partition wasn’t the beginning of independence—it was the beginning of erasure.’

Long story extremely short, Hindus in Bangladesh, 30% of the population in 1947, many ‘part of Bengal’s intellectual, professional, and agrarian classes’, went ‘from citizens to strangers’ in their own home. What became East Pakistan saw massive communal violence and population shifts. Later, Hindus faced systemic repression by the state itself. East Pakistan’s ‘Evacuee Property Act’ (1951) labelled them as ‘absentees’ or ‘enemies’ and provided the legal basis for Hindu-owned lands to be systematically seized. By 1965, the ‘Enemy property Act’ ‘gave the state seeping power to dispossess them – culminating in the ‘Vested Property Act’, which lasted well into Bangladesh’s democratic era’ (Hossain, 2015; Datta, 2004). ‘Their share of the population declined to under 8% by 2022—a long exodus driven by systemic dispossession, mob violence, and state silence (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2022).

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, founded in 1889 in Qadian, India, is a reformist section of Islam, whose history and philosophy are well worth learning about. The Ahmadiyya stand for nonviolence, rationalism, and cooperation – as well attested by their extensive humanitarian work worldwide. ‘At partition, the community supported the creation of Pakistan. They believed the new Muslim state might offer them refuge from British prejudice and orthodox hostility. Their leader at the time, Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad, even instructed Ahmadis to migrate to Pakistan and participate in its nation-building. But this dream curdled into a nightmare. Pakistan’s state repression includes a constitutional amendment (1974) declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims; in 1984, Pakistan legally prohibited Ahmadis to “pose as Muslims”: praying, greeting, even naming their children could lead to jail (Human Rights Watch, 2022). Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws further restrict Ahmadi citizen rights, including the right to vote. So ‘a community that once saw itself as foundational to Pakistan’s spiritual core is now hunted within its borders’. In Bangladesh, although there are no formal anti-Ahmadi laws, the community faces intense mob violence, societal exclusion, and political silence.

The Baloch story is different, as Baluchistan is a territorial unit forcibly annexed by Pakistan soon after partition. In 1947, Baluchistan was not part of Pakistan—it was an independent princely state under the Khanate of Kalat. It refused to join either India or Pakistan and was promised independence by Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. However, and although the British accepted the Khanate’s independence, in 1948 it was forcibly annexed by Pakistan – via military threat. What followed has been a 75-year-long rebellion for recognition.

Baluchistan is a large region stretching across south-western Pakistan, easter Iran, and southern Afghanistan. It makes up nearly 44% of Pakistan’s landmass but hosts only 6% of the population. Baloch literacy and health indicators are the lowest in Pakistan, and this despite Baluchistan’s rich resources in natural gas, minerals, and coastline. The region is also heavily militarized. The state has responded to dissent with crackdowns, disappearances, and information blackouts. ‘For Baloch activists, Partition didn’t create a homeland—it imposed a colonial dynamic by another name, where resource extraction replaced representation, and nationhood meant surveillance, not sovereignty’ (International Crisis Group, 2023).

This the background, the Future’s Past, against which current stories unfold.

PART II – SNAPSHOTS OF LIVED LIFE

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So speaks Mr. Dhiman Deb Choudhury, President of the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM): ‘The story is very pathetic. In 2001, right before the elections of 2001 there was a reign of terror. And actually, the Bangladeshi government, later in 2014, disclosed what happened. So one of the ladies somehow escaped to West Bengal. And I don’t know how she got there, but I found her with the two little children on her lap. The first look she has given me as if she has no will to survive, she’s surviving by clinching on those one boy and one girl for their survival. She survived, and the horror and the story she has given me every places she went through for a little bit of comfort, right? First of all, she was gang raped. … her husband was killed on the spot, and she dragged herself with her little children to some neighbors, and in return, she got the same brutality. Then she dragged herself across the border some way or other. And I don’t know the real stories behind it, because bits and pieces what she told me… I was in a visit to see some people that escaped to India, to go and visit them and see their conditions, understand their stories.’

Such stories are all too common in Bangladesh. All minorities are targeted, but women always suffer the most. The situation has worsened recently, and the impediments to offer relief are endless, staring with pure logistics: [Since August 5, 2024] We received over 3000 incidents. Some we are verifying. Some we have verified. There has been rape, conversion, arson, looting, destruction of Temples, plundering of minority properties, whether businesses, homes, and also forceful kidnapping of girls – and some of the bodies that we are finding now, nowadays, with hands chopped, these bodies we believe that are probably connected to those kidnapped girls… Now in Bangladesh, is very difficult to use DNA evidence, and it will take time for us to find the actual evidence of who were the people behind it and who was being killed.’

But a culture of silence and taboo is another impediment to the action by Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM):  The situation was so bad for us to even go and verify what happened because of social taboo, because of social shame, Hindu families specifically – Hindus and Buddhist families. They do not come out, right? I’m talking about Buddhist families from the Chittagong Tracts as well… And in other places, there are small pockets of tribals and indigenous people around the country, and this happened with them as well. I send the people there, their family completely denied that anything happened to them.’

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Mr. Ahamad Tabshir Choudhury, from the Ahmadyyia Jama’at of Bangladesh, sees the same phenomena from a slightly different lens – perhaps by comparing them with Pakistani experiences. So he introduces the matter by saying ‘Bangladesh has a very harmonious situation, particularly for communal issues; Bengalis are very much tolerant. … Initially [after partition], there was some social resistance. From time to time when, say, one family is a Sunni family, some of the members accept the Ahmadiyya, there was a reaction in the in the family, the society, it happens. But organized opposition was not there even after independence. You know that in Bangladesh, since our independence war, our liberations in the name of secularism… There was no problem, definitely not from the state side and also not from the social side. We have a good number of freedom fighters…. It started later, when General Ershad was in power [1982-1990]. From then on, Mr. Choudhury mentions recurrent spurts of violence – killings, desecrated temples, burned houses – throughout the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s.

Since August 5, 2024, ‘the same day, that afternoon, again, the fanatic groups attacked our families… around five, six places were attacked. Our houses were burned or demolished or vandalized. And many people were injured. Among them one boy, a young boy who had been struggling for life for over three months, and then he succumbed to death. So this sort of things are regularly going on… We are under threat. However, one thing I must mention that you know on the fifth, sixth, seventh, August, there was no government here, so therefore they took this advantage. However, when we contacted the army, they came forward.’

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Can the Ahmadiyya consider themselves lucky to enjoy some level of state support? The Baloch, by contrast, have the state itself as their greatest threat, repressor, and exploiter. The army only shows up to kill and crush, the government seems to only be interested in repressing and exploiting. How is this lived every day? So says Mr. Mehran Marri, Baluchistan’s representative at the UNHCR: ‘The Kill and dump policy was adopted by [Pervez] Musharraf (2001-2008). They started this kill and dump policy to inflict fear in the public. They realized that the Baloch youth were not the youth of the 70s or the 60s or the 50s…. They’re far more vigilant. They’re far more aware of what’s going on, and they cannot be corrupted by madrasas and growing your long beards and looking like a clown and just saying, we’re all Muslims, so we all belong together. That rubbish is not going to sell anymore. We are secular people. Religion is between us and God… It’s a personal matter, and that’s how it should remain.’

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The most recent cases are mainly led by Baloch youth, mainly by Baloch female youths, educated doctors… These are intellectuals, young ladies who are the forefront, and they have borne the burn of now Pakistan’s military oppression, their family members, their fathers, their brothers have been killed and dumped. So these are the new generations, and they’re intellectually very connected and very balanced and stable thinkers. … When they try to protest, they say, you are terrorists. There’s no freedom of expression. There’s no freedom of assembly. … Yeah, we cannot even wear our clothes.

People are mocked. I have seen on national television, they make fun of our black Baloch people, of our makhanis on national television. This is racism in the 21st Century. They should be ashamed of themselves… They’re making fun of their curly hair, of their brown skin. They’re dehumanizing…. Oh, you know, they’re too short to qualify to be in the army. How dare they? I mean, how dare they even say these things, let alone actually practice it. They do practice it.’

These testimonies paint a tragic pattern. Not isolated acts of violence, but systemic abandonment. From the state’s failure to protect Hindus in 2001, to inaction during coordinated attacks on Ahmadi homes in 2024, and the army’s role in suppressing Baloch voices with deadly precision, a common thread emerges: the absence—or complicity—of state power.

PART III – FROM LACK OF RESPONSE TO ALL-OUT EXPLOITATION

Mr. Dhiman Deb Choudhury, President of the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM), depicts the plight of minorities in Bangladesh: The situation of minorities in Bangladesh after August 2024 is indescribable due to the lack of registration… Now all minorities, regardless of party or opinion, are termed as collaborators of the fascist government. As a result, their lives are in danger, also due to the silence by the Yunus administration… no one has received any kind of proper justice anywhere. No one has received any administrative assistance.

No top-down support. But lots of bottom-up persecutions – also through the pervasiveness of social media, which is used for violent means. In Bangladesh, the Digital Security Act – ironically created to regulate social media disinformation leading to communal violence – is now used to threaten, steal, destroy and repress: You can go to social media, hack someone’s account and then spew some heinous words against one religion or other, and specifically this targets Hindus or Buddhist or Christians, who are accused of using social media to go after the Muslim religion. But actually, those accounts are being hacked with ill motives… Like you have a business, for example, they want to go after you or your property or things like that. They use this social media accounts to go after these people… And the government is not taking steps because, see, this is a one-sided mentality. When temples are destroyed, there is no Blasphemy Act, there is no DSA, right? All the clerics in social media talking about all kinds of stuff… there is no DSA….

Bangladesh’s famous NGO network is also unsupportive: I requested to several NGOs, including United Nations Food Programs and United Nations refugee, the High Commissioner for Refugees to extend the help to these people. They didn’t… Some people from ISKCON went in there and build their houses. This is an irony. So many NGOs in Bangladesh receiving so much money when it comes to the point, no one goes there. Forget about government. None of these NGO went in there. Why such a bias? Where is the humanity in that case?

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In fact, Mr. Dhinam deb Choudhury feels the plight of minorities is simply erased, or denied to start with. … The government cannot say that we didn’t reach out. So many letters, so many complaints that we have filed… But to our dismay, the government didn’t reach out to me, and I personally wrote to the home ministry. Now I won’t say that some of the administration is not helping us in in certain cases, but the denial and deceit that we have seen in previous governments continues, and it is a vicious cycle because this impunity culture has been fostered in the country that is now dragging down minorities, but that will surely drag down the entire society. I have appealed back several times to previous governments and the current government alike, on behalf of the organization, because denial is not the way to build a nation.

Mr. Ahamad Tabshir Choudhury, from the Ahmadyyia Jama’at of Bangladesh, is more positive. He adamant: Mostly, I should say it depends on the local situation. Central Government, always, whoever in the in the power, or the interim government, we found they are quite supportive…’

Local violence is of two types: One comes from virtual threats on social media… the other from Islamic organizations… I don’t feel uncomfortable to say Islamic organizations, because we are also part of Islam… they are organizations in the name of Islam… they are not Islamic organizations. They are right-wing politicians, or radicals… There is some opposition from religious fanatics when our people goes to the police station or seeks support… Then we are told that, you know, you are a minority people. So they try to oppress us. Always that happens. I mean, this should change. But one thing I should say that, whenever we have complained, we got support from the army… The army is performing better than the civil authorities.’

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Still, there is far greater freedom and tolerance in Bangladesh than in Pakistan. And the Ahmadiyya receive some support, for which they are grateful. But it is far from enough, even from the most optimistic lens. There’s an existential threat at all times, especially during the Ahmadiyya yearly gathering: We can pray. Offer our prayers at our mosque. No problem. There’s no problem, but there are some [outbursts of violence]. The calling is once in a year, so we don’t know what will happen in next year, but well… this year it’s over, and we could do it somehow, yeah, but we don’t know…’

This sounds stoic. Violence seems downplayed, even as it is not underestimated. Perhaps it’s linked to the Ahmadiyya worldview – or, again, to a comparison with Pakistani conditions. By contrast, the Baloch people live state repression and exploitation in the fullest extent, and ‘stoic’ is not the word one would use to describe their views on the matter. For not only are the Baloch terrorized by the state military, they see their territory’s rich natural resources being stolen from them: Can you imagine, gas comes from Baluchistan and is sold to factories in Punjab at 1/50 of the price, and it is sold in our capital for 10 times over… I mean, it’s crazy. First of all, in Baluchistan, most places don’t have gas. Wherever they do the prices are totally hiked up and artificially inflated.

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And now we have a very dangerous partner in this whole toxic mix, China. China, as you know, is ruthless capitalism… this toxic partnership of China and Pakistan has been seriously detrimental to the Bucha nation. Our resources are being exponentially exploited. Mining is on 24 hours. I mean, theft and plunder is of different dynamics that China has a technology to steal at a very, very rapid speed, and that’s what they’re doing all the CPEC thing…. It’s a military base. That’s how they decoy the real plunder. And the stealing is happening behind the scenes, people don’t talk about it, be it our gold,, be it uranium, be it a rare minerals, all is being stolen.

And Punjabi Pakistani generals, they’re petty people. They’re very small people. They come from no backgrounds that they say normally, countries have an army. Here, the Army has a country…. They live like Gulf sheikhs. So, you know, they’re not bothered. They’re selling everything at minimal prices, because it’s not theirs. It’s Baluchistan’s wealth. They know they’re going to run they’re going to move to Australia, Canada, wherever the hell they get the passports and the properties in the Middle Eastern countries. So yeah, that’s the state of affairs.

The experiences described above speak not just to isolated national failures—but to a regional crisis of minority rights, where religious, ethnic, and political persecution is met with either state indifference or state hostility.

And yet, this is not happening in a vacuum. Governments continue to receive aid, loans, and trade benefits from the international community—even as their domestic records deteriorate. As the voices of survivors and witnesses grow louder, the question becomes unavoidable: Where is the international community?

PART IV – FROM INACTION TO ‘LAUGHING MATTER’

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In the wake of the July–August 2024 protests in Bangladesh, which culminated in the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the international community turned its attention to the country’s human rights situation. Responding to an invitation from the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) dispatched a fact-finding mission to investigate the alleged abuses during the unrest. SADF has pointed out how biased and inaccurate the mission’s Report seems to have been. Mr. Dhiman Deb Choudhury, President of the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM), describes his experience with the Mission.  The legal team, as well as investigative team, contacted me early on… because we have sent some people to Geneva who have submitted a complaint. But the first thing they said, we are only interested from July to August 5. And then another group said, Okay, fifth to August, 20. And I was asking them, what are the specific purpose of these dates? And they couldn’t answer me.

And they were only interested what our military has done. When I’m talking about minorities, they are discounting all this. They are saying, ‘Oh, this is part of the political turmoil’. But I clearly challenged them on several occasions. I also challenged the United Nations Committee through a formal letter. I do not agree with the type of thought process they have. … One of the students told me that they wanted to take this lady to the places where the arson has occurred, but she’s not going … when I called her, she’s saying, ‘you know, it’s very dangerous to go there’. I said, ‘You are part of UN investigating team. Why didn’t you go to the people and talk with them?’ She said, ‘Well, right now I’m busy’… That was the attitude.

If you look at how the UN team has framed the matter in their report… their whole purpose was to somehow that I think, and maybe I am wrong, but my assumption, is to support this government and not find them complicit of some of what that they have done, and the culture of impunity I’m talking about through this denial… I do not know why the government was doing this. You know, just recognizing what happened would have been uplifted the spirit, right? Because we all thought that there was going to be a new Bangladesh… That’s what I have to say. I find UN team was hiding the whole truth, and they shouldn’t have done this.

‘So that means that whatever report you provided them that was not mentioned in the UN Report?’

‘No, it was not’.

This is incredible – and incredibly frustrating – yet it is true. The Ahmaddyyia community, however, felt more heard and supported. Although not completely.

‘They stayed here for a couple of months in Bangladesh… We were called quite a quite a number of times… They took the information, they took the evidences… They called us at their office. They called us at Gulshan. They interviewed us. They also interviewed the victims, that boy who finally died, they took the interview of his father. They have taken and they took all the documents after that, suddenly we were called by the UN Office, that head of South Asian region of UN Human Right…. that was basically a preliminary meeting before the visit of Mr. Volker Türk. So in that meeting, we were represented with other communities, also the Hindi community, the Buddhist community and the Christian community…. But however, very interestingly, when the main meeting took place with Mr. Türk, we were not invited… Even in the morning I called the UN Office here, why didn’t you inform us. Then I was told my name was not there. So that’s really sad.’

What about wider international support? SADF moderator, Mr. Tapas Baul, asked about how the international community, especially the European Union and other western powers, could help ensuring constitutional and fundamental rights of the Ahmadiyya in Bangladesh. ‘We Bangladeshi Ahmadis, or wherever we live, we want to solve the issue locally, within our government, within we don’t want to go to the international community like we have seen in in our country, that whenever there is a crisis situation, our political parties goes to the foreigners… We believe that our administration should do this. However, in some situations, we have seen that the Western Community has come forward. The US Embassy was directly in connection with us in the past. They gave good support. We didn’t go to them, but they came forward… Similarly, sometimes the European Union came forward. … So since the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamat is a worldwide organization…. our community is quite strong in USA, in UK, in Canada, in Germany and some other western countries. They have good connections, and sometimes they took matters to them. But I believe that our administration, our government, whoever in power, they should be able to protect their citizens. We don’t want to look at the foreigners to come rescue us.

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Maybe this is a privileged take – we all underplay that which we can take for granted, perhaps? From Mr. Mehran Marri, Baluchistan’s representative at the UNHCR, we learn the perspective of those for whom international acion is the only hope for freedom.  It’s an interesting perspective. The United Nations as an organization has miserably failed the Baloch nation… Although working groups on enforced disappearances, on extra judicial killings, on minorities, in their own capacity, with their special reports, have been doing as possible within the perimeters that they can do…Bbut the United Nations as an organization, especially the Human Rights Council, where I have been represented for over two decades, has miserably failed and disappointed the people of Baluchistan and not fulfilled this legal obligations. It has played into the hands of countries like China and Pakistan. Switzerland, especially Geneva, where the Human Rights Council is…  Zurich and the German partner, they have a bit of spine. But  Geneva, my God, it’s unbelievable. It’s a police state. I was banned for 10 years because I’m a security threat to them, because I speak against China and Pakistan, and the billions of dollars’ worth of my stolen wealth goes to Swiss bank accounts… They put their black money, our stolen wealth, in Swiss accounts, and I was exposing all that. So they gave me a 10-year ban. The United Nations should be in a country with a spine. It should be in Germany, France, United Kingdom, a country that can stand on its own feet, they will not get scared of China or Pakistan. I mean, it’s a laughing matter, okay?

For Mr. Marri, Geneva is a laughing matter, the EU is weak, and Baluchistan’s greatest allies come from places westerners tend not to expect. All the more reason to listen closely? Britain was a great backer of Pakistan, but unfortunately or fortunately, they have fallen in the lap of China now, whereby, automatically, this creates friction with the Western world and the US, right? So, yes, we therefore see in the foreseeable future… Our independence is on the horizon… As soon as Trump decides what he wants with Baluchistan, the European Union will follow suit. That’s always been the case, even Ukraine, I think because Trump and Putin, they have their own, some kind of a connection or an understanding. That’s the reason the European Union are not happy. But I would love to see the European Union make one decision against the wishes of Trump or the US. They will not. …

In this worldview, more than western powers, Baluchistan trusts its neighbors. I witnessed the breaking of USSR with my own eyes, if the USSR can break, Pakistan can too. And I think the Afghan regime has realized that Pakistan always loves to colonize its neighbors… the Taliban have seen the true face of this devil. So now the Taliban are on the same page as India, as Balochistan, as America. Meanwhile Pakistan, they’re trying to use the Taliban name now to cheat the Bengalis again, to do that dirty work, to use Bangladesh as a springboard for the international terrorism….

In fact, we have the total blueprint of what should be done in Baluchistan, because it happened in Bangladesh, and India negotiated the terms, and Indira Gandhi went to all the big powers at that time. … Of course, the United States objected, but Indira Gandhi still did not stop. And I think the final push was when the USSR backed Indira Gandhi to push Bangladesh as an independent nation… So why not Pakistan? …

I think building bridges is the way forward. The European Union can operate. Iran, Baluchistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, all these countries in the region, we can have our own very strong union. We could even extend the union to the Middle East. The Baloch have our origins, a lot of us come from the Middle East. We have very good relations with Oman, with UAE. We have a lot of roots, a lot of similarities, right? So we can connect. We can really be a bridge. …

Baloch independence is going to be a blessing for regional peace and prosperity. We always look at the blueprint of the UAE. Baluchistan is very much like the UAE. It has its own Emirates, different Emirates. We all drip different tribes over there, everybody consolidates. They sit, they discuss. It’s mutually acceptable. Things are accepted with consensus. Things go forward. I’ve lived in the Emirates. It’s probably much better than Europe in many, many, many ways… There’s no conflict of interest that the country operates perfectly. It’s prosperous for its own people and the wider world.

Across Bangladesh and Pakistan, minority communities confront violence, institutional neglect, and erasure. When they turn to the international community, they are met not with consistent support, but with an uneven patchwork of interest, inaction, and—in some cases—dismissal. For some, like the Ahmadis, global structures still offer fragments of support and recognition. For others, like the Baloch, even the prospect of international help has become something to mock. What unites all, however, is the urgent need for more than rhetoric. As these communities continue to bear the weight of repression, the world’s silence becomes complicity

CONCLUSION

Throughout this report, we have followed voices from the margins—Hindus in Bangladesh, the Ahmadiyya community in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the Baloch in Pakistan. We have listened to the stories of families erased, communities persecuted, and identities denied. We have seen how mob violence is met with silence, how the state is often not a protector but a perpetrator, and how international institutions waver between procedural concern and outright neglect.

What emerges is a portrait not only of violence, but of something deeper: a decay in the societal fabric itself. In the words of Mr. Dhiman Deb Choudhury, President of the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCB): We talked about the DSA… They have not done any an investigation. They just went with the flow. So you have this scenario, and then you have the society at large that has been infused with intolerance. And that intolerance comes from a specific type of education that has been fostered through religious institutions, and through that, it has decayed the entire societal fabric. Now how do you address this when the entire societal fabric has been decayed, a behavioral pathology of intolerance has been developed within the society? How do you cure that? … We need transitional justice, a holistic approach… I think, with that, and if we got international support and Bangladesh government’s cooperation, we can able to bring all the offender to justice, as well as create a society for the betterment of the nation.

The Baloch plight seems more intricate still. Here, the oppressor is not a mob—but the state itself. The Baloch people face systematic military repression, enforced disappearances, racist dehumanization, and economic exploitation of their mineral-rich lands. And they do so without even the constitutional protections that other minorities still cling to. When international institutions fail to act—and when aid continues to flow uncritically to abuser regimes—the message is clear: sovereignty outweighs justice. Yet justice cannot remain hostage to geopolitics. The case of Baluchistan reminds us that the silence of the world is not neutral—it is enabling. Without urgent international pressure, meaningful local resistance, and regional cooperation, Baluchistan may remain the world’s forgotten occupation.

Across Bangladesh and Pakistan, minority persecution is not an anomaly—it is a mirror held up to the nation’s soul. And when that mirror cracks, the consequences spill far beyond any single group. These crises are not simply about protecting minorities—they are about preserving what remains of social cohesion, democratic rule, and human dignity in South Asia.

What is needed now is more than condemnation. What is needed is transformation.

REFERENCE LIST

Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. (2023). Persecution of Ahmadis worldwide. https://www.persecutionofahmadis.org

Amnesty International. (2022). Pakistan 2022 human rights overview. https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/south-asia/pakistan/Bangladesh

Bureau of Statistics. (2022). Population and housing census 2022: Preliminary report. https://bbs.portal.gov.bd

Datta, P. (2004). Vested Property Act and its impact on minorities in Bangladesh. Journal of Social Studies, 102(2), 33–45. https://www.worldcat.org/title/vested-property-act-and-its-impact-on-minorities-in-bangladesh/oclc/758308378

International Crisis Group. (2023). The conflict in Balochistan: Causes, actors, and the state response. https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/pakistan

Hossain, N. (2015). Dispossession, discrimination and disenfranchisement: Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. Minority Rights Group International. https://minorityrights.org/publications/dispossession-discrimination-and-disenfranchisement-hindu-minorities-in-bangladesh/

Human Rights Watch. (2022). World Report 2022 – Pakistan Chapter. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/pakistan

ANNEX

🔍 RECOMMENDED SOURCES FOR MINORITY DATA IN SOUTH ASIA

🇵🇰 Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan

1. US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)

• Annual reports cover anti-Ahmadi laws, persecution trends, and legal updates.
  🔗 https://www.uscirf.gov
  

1. Human Rights Watch – Pakistan Country Reports

• Regular updates on mob violence, blasphemy laws, and systemic discrimination.
  🔗 https://www.hrw.org/asia/pakistan

1. Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat International

• Their official press releases and reports are highly detailed.
  🔗 https://www.persecutionofahmadis.org
  

🇧🇩 Hindus in Bangladesh

1. Minority Rights Group International – Bangladesh Profile

• Excellent summaries of history, legal discrimination, and recent violence.
  🔗 https://minorityrights.org/minorities/hindus/

1. HRCBM (Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities)

• First-hand data, legal briefs, and interviews.
  🔗 http://www.hrcbm.org
  

1. Pew Research Center – Global Religious Futures

• Useful for long-term religious demographic trends.
  🔗 https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/

🇵🇰 Balochistan and Enforced Disappearances

1. Amnesty International – Balochistan Reports

• Reports on disappearances, military operations, and abuses.
  🔗 https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/south-asia/pakistan/

1. Human Rights Council of Balochistan (HRCB)

• Monthly stats and case profiles of the disappeared.
  🔗 http://hrcbalochistan.com
  

1. UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances – Country Communications

• UN archives on Balochistan disappearances.
  🔗 https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/disappearances/wgeid/pages/wgeidindex.aspx

📊 Cross-Cutting / Legal Frameworks

1. International Crisis Group – South Asia Reports

• In-depth analysis of legal-political context.
  🔗 https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia

1. UN OHCHR – Minority Rights Resources

• Legal obligations and gaps in regional compliance.
  🔗 https://www.ohchr.org/en/minorities

1. Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life – Government Restrictions Index

• Data on laws and policies limiting religious freedom.
  🔗 https://www.pewresearch.org/religion

DISCLAIMERS

• This text was organized with the help of SADF’s Custom Chat GPT, which was also consulted to provide contextual data, historical references, and structural suggestions based on the interviews. All the images were created by our Custom GPT.
• The views expressed by Mrs. Casaca and quoted interviewees are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF).
• While efforts have been made to ensure factual accuracy, some testimonies include personal recollections and lived experiences which may not always be independently verifiable.
• Visuals used in this campaign are symbolic representations intended to raise awareness and foster empathy. They do not depict specific individuals mentioned in the text unless explicitly stated.
• SADF is committed to respectful dialogue and does not endorse any form of hate speech, communal incitement, or political bias in the dissemination of this material.

Madalena Casaca

Madalena Casaca is SADF’s Editor and part-time Researcher for the Democracy Research Programme. Ms Casaca is a graduate in European Studies (graduated 2008) from the University of Lisbon, where she explored with high productivity not only European and Western Social Sciences but also African Studies, Russian Studies, and Anthropology. Ms Casaca also completed a yearly Documentary Programme in Prague in 2012/2013 and attended the Film School of the University of Wales in Newport in 2011/2012, where all the basics of visual communication were explored and developed. Less

A one-year investment was made in Moscow studying the Russian language, of which she holds the B2 degree. Madalena began a Master’s degree in World History at the Moscow State University, where she completed the first semester, receiving the highest marks in all courses. She had to return to Portugal for personal reasons and now raises her young daughters in Lisbon. She is transforming her Masters’ Diploma on World History into a non-academic book.