Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Feb. 24th, 2015

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Ms. Grewal.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, witnesses, for your time and your presentations.

According to the 2011 census, Sunni Muslims constitute 90% and Hindus make up 9.5% of the total population. The remainder of the population is predominantly Christian and Theravada Buddhist.

According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, a number of Islamists are involved in attacks against minority communities, especially Hindus. Since the start of 2015, at least six Hindus have been killed and three have been raped. Seven temples, 54 homes, and 84 Hindu idols have been attacked and vandalized.

What is the motivation behind these attacks? Is it to drive the minorities out of the country, or, as some government and other observers claim, is it due to motivations that have little to do with religious beliefs or affiliations?

[Kirit Sinha Roy]

I think you've got the point: it's to drive all the minorities from that part.

I can tell you a story. Our national mosque is Baitul Mukarram. The chief priest of the mosque once said that in Muslim countries, only Muslims should stay, that those who are of other religions there have to convert to Islam, and that in the democratic countries, their people will go and establish their rights over there.

Naturally, these Jamaats or other Islamic parties, their goal is to.... I'll tell you. In one family, if one girl is raped, the entire community will deviate from this family. That family then has no choice but to leave the country. That way, they are keeping two things in mind: land grabs and minority girls.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Dewan, do you have anything to say on this?

[Dr. Aditya Dewan]

Concerning minorities in general, if you look at the figures in 1947 when India was divided into Pakistan and India, you see that a significant number, about 32%, of minorities were Hindus and others. Right now, that is down to almost 8%. The figure speaks for itself in regard to how much persecution of minorities is going on.

They have different methods for false acquisition or for any other things. They state that the people “initiate rioting”. When rioting occurs, the people are attacked, all their things are burned, and the Hindus leave for India. Then their lands are taken over. This is one method.

In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, it's the same thing. Our indigenous population fled to Mizoram in India, and to Tripura. Also, we have around 100,000 indigenous people in Arunachal, India, which was called NEFA, the North-East Frontier Agency. They have been there many years and still do not have citizenship. They went there in 1964. When the land was flooded by the hydroelectric plant, 100,000 people were displaced and 50% of the best agricultural land was under water. After that, we don't have any land. Where will we have land? Where is the room for the new settlers?

We have no quarrel with any other Bengalis. We have been living there side by side for hundreds of years and we have had no problem. The problems started when Bangladesh became independent and the Arab people, under false pretenses, took over the land from neighbouring areas. There's a reign of terror in the area. We don't get any justice. We don't go to anything, anywhere, as we don't get any kind of justice. As you know, that court system is not like it is here. This means what I have said: there is no rule of law.

The rule of law is the key to keeping the whole country together. Anyone here gets justice, through the media, through the justice system, or from anywhere. The rule of law is not there in Bangladesh. That's my whole point. Everything is politically and religiously motivated to destroy whole communities. This is what is happening in Bangladesh. It's a very sad story.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you, Ms. Grewal.

We'll go now to Professor Cotler.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I want to thank our witnesses for being here.

I want to say hello again to you, Dr. Dewan. I appreciate your being here.

I have two questions, really, which arise from your testimony.

You mentioned that the Canadian government provides considerable aid to Bangladesh, which should mean that the Canadian government would have leverage with respect to influencing the Government of Bangladesh.

Also, the second point you mention, which is a rather painful point, is that the plight of the indigenous people in Bangladesh is simply not on the international radar screen. You don't read about it. One doesn't hear about it. That helps to nurture the culture of impunity, and frankly, that helps to encourage the violations of the rule of law, because not only is there no world that is watching, but in fact it's not on any radar screen.

How can we, as the Canadian government or Parliament, influence the Bangladesh government, given that we do provide aid? How do we influence them to protect the indigenous population, to respect the rule of law, to end the culture of impunity, and to respect the peace agreement—all the things you mentioned? That's number one.

Number two, which is not unrelated to it, how can we make this case in public opinion—even public opinion here in Canada—given that one set of violations cancels out another set of violations? In a world in which everybody is talking about ISIS and Boko Haram, etc., how we do we give expression to your particular very painful situation?

[Dr. Aditya Dewan]

Thank you, sir.

According to my understanding, there is of course a lot of money channelled through CIDA to Bangladesh. I don't have any figures for how much, or for how much is invested, or for how much aid money goes to the Chittagong Hills. I don't have any figures because I was unable to get anything of that kind.

Of course, as a donor-dependent country, Bangladesh most fears publicity. That's number one. Number two is if the aid donor has some kind of influence.

This is our responsibility as Canadians. I am also very proud as a Canadian citizen right now that our moral and ethical responsibility is to promote respect for human rights in an area: if you are receiving my aid, democracy and human rights go side by side as a package. We must promote human rights. Indigenous peoples and religious minorities should be respected, just like we do any others here.

That's what I really want the Canadian government to say to the people. I'm not saying that we stop the aid. It's a very poor country, one of the poorest countries in the world, with a population of 150 million right now in an area of 55,000 square miles. Within our capacity and our aid money, of course, we can have influence there.

Another thing you have asked me about is how we can promote.... It is basically a kind of media coverage that we are unable to do there, where there is a lot of menace for the media. Here, they are unable or don't want to do that, because we have such insignificant numbers. The attitude I find here is, “Why should we care?” We are here all the time, but in fact, all of our movements are hijacked by things like ISIS and Islamic terrorism. We have been waiting for this moment. It has been postponed many times. I am very indebted to Dr. Bose. She was trying to help organize this meeting for us.

You will remember that I gave you one example. I went to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2011. I had a press conference there. The media were there. We gave testimony. There was huge coverage. We also took part in speeches and rallies in front of the United Nations building, so we had some coverage.

One day, a Bengali woman came to me. In New York she was a local member of the Awami League. She asked why I was doing all those things and asked to talk about it, saying that they didn't want publicity. She invited me to meet with Bangladesh's ambassador to the United Nations. She said that she was going to arrange a dinner or something like that for me, and then I understood that they are really very afraid of publicity. This is probably one of the two things that makes the Bangladesh government listen in regard to what has to be done.

The problem I can see, as I said before, is that the army is so powerful, and they are not going to do anything. They know very well that if they go on rampaging or killing on a larger scale it will be in the newspaper and other places. So they are doing slowly something called creeping genocide. I have here the IWGIA's “Militarization in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh—The Slow Demise of the Region’s Indigenous Peoples”. If anybody is interested, I can send you an electronic copy. I have the document, if anybody's interested. I have 15 copies here. You can pick them up. Most of the documents are here.

Surprisingly—I'm so happy—on February 18 we got documents from Amnesty International about the silencing of the indigenous people of Bangladesh. They are not allowed to talk to foreigners, not even to Bangladeshi organizations and individuals. This is very....

I am saying that enough is enough. This is what I have to say.

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

At the end of the meeting, perhaps you could bring those documents up to the clerk and leave them with him. He'll make sure that the members of the committee get to see them. Thank you.

Let's go now to Mr. Hillyer, please.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

With regard to the country of Bangladesh not wanting publicity—they like the fact that they're low on the radar screen—do you think, besides putting the pressure on with our foreign aid, etc., visits from parliamentarians would make a difference?

[Dr. Aditya Dewan]

Of course it would make a difference. It would be more powerful and forceful if parliamentarians could raise this issue in the House of Commons. Any kind of discussions would very greatly help. That's my view.

Once it became known, too, they would think, “Well, we can't keep them silent anymore.” If some of the actions taken against the indigenous people became known, and reached the top in many important places, they would think about that. I think it would make a great difference.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You can go with more than one question if the answer is that brief.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

No, that's good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

In that case, we will go to Mr. Benskin.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you, gentlemen, for your presence here.

One of the things about participating in this committee is the things you learn. I would first like to apologize for my own ignorance in terms of the plight of indigenous people in Bangladesh. I guess I suffer from the limitations of western existence in thinking that the problems we see are the only ones that exist. I thank you for bringing your situation to our attention. I'm glad this committee was able to facilitate that.

I guess my question comes on the heels of Professor Cotler's. I'm particularly concerned and fascinated to a certain extent by what you were saying in terms of what the government does in striking the term “indigenous people” from all their documents, as if striking those words from the documents make you non-existent.

How are you referred to, then, in terms of your existence, your actual existence, in Bangladesh? Could you elaborate on some of the work you're doing in order to raise awareness of your existence and the trials and tribulations that you as indigenous people face in Bangladesh?

[Dr. Aditya Dewan]

In 2011 I sent a memorandum to the Bangladesh prime minister on the constitutional amendment work that was going on. It was the 16th amendment to the constitution of Bangladesh. We requested or appealed that indigenous people, their identity as indigenous people, should be enshrined in Bangladesh's constitution. The Bangladesh government completely denied that appeal. Hasina's government could do that under the constitution, because they have more than two-thirds of the majority. They can do whatever they like right now because of the majority they have in the government.

I'll give you just one example. At the airport there were lots of billboards with pictures of smiling indigenous women. When the question later came up about the UN with regard to indigenous people, they removed the billboards. The indigenous women were erased. Subsequently there were government orders that all the foreign aid agencies and government agencies must not refer to indigenous peoples. Government officials were ordered to erase the term “indigenous” from all government documents, when previously....

So they said one thing one day and another thing the next day. They completely changed overnight because whatever army-loving group went to the prime minister and said, “If you recognize the indigenous people, we'll have to give up our land to them”, and this and that. As I said, there was the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and Bangladesh was one of the signatories. Even the ILO, the International Labour Organization, in conventions 107 and 169 recognizes Bangladesh as a signatory.

If they say that indigenous people are just there, there will be a big problem because of the money and some other things they get from UNESCO, from the United Nations, from the World Bank. This is the reason they are very much denying why there should be indigenous.... They are saying that we are indigenous.

That is my understanding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you to our witnesses. I know you went through some transportation issues getting here. We're grateful that you were able to come and shed some light on this very important subject. We very much appreciate your attendance here.

If you do have any materials to leave, please leave them with the clerk before you go back home.

Thanks very much, colleagues.

We are adjourned.