60 Hindus Forced to 'Become Muslims'

War hero testifies against Sayedee

Resuming his deposition yesterday, Ruhul Amin Nabin told the International Crimes Tribunal that Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee and other collaborators had compelled 60 Hindus to convert to Islam during the Liberation War in Pirojpur. He said they also helped the Pakistani army rape several women in 1971.
Freedom fighter Nabin, who was 21 years old at the time, said some of the Hindus of Parer Haat area, forced to convert, fled to India as they were unable to deal with the humiliation. They, however, returned after the liberation of Bangladesh and followed their own religion, he said.
Now 61, Nabin began his deposition Wednesday and resumed and completed giving his testimony yesterday. He is the second prosecution witness to testify against Sayedee, who has been charged with crimes against humanity committed during the 1971 war.
Detained Sayedee, 71, was present in the dock of the tribunal during the testimony.
A three-judge tribunal led by its Chairman Justice Nizamul Huq recorded the testimony of Nabin. It fixed December 11 for cross-examination of Ruhul Amin Nabin and Mahabubul Alam Hawlader, who completed his deposition Wednesday. There are 66 more prosecution witnesses yet to testify in the case.
Nabin yesterday narrated how during the Liberation War Sayedee helped the Pakistani occupation forces loot valuables from Awami League activists, freedom fighters and the Hindu community in Pirojpur.
The Pakistani occupation forces went to Pirojpur district on May 3, 1971. Around 52 members of the force arrived in 26 rickshaws at Parer Haat area of Pirojpur on May 7, Nabin told the court, a fact which supports the statement of Hawlader made a day before.
Sekandar Ali Shikder, Danesh Ali Mollah, Mawlana Mosleh Uddin and Sayedee, among other collaborators, welcomed the Pakistani force led by one Cap Ejaz. Fluent Urdu speaker Sayedee managed to form a close and friendly relationship with the Pakistani occupation forces, Nabin said, echoing witness Hawlader's statement made on Wednesday.
With the help of collaborators, the Pakistani force looted over 50 houses and shops in the area, including the shop of a local businessman Makhan who had around 20kg of gold (22-sher) and silver jewellery buried under his shop.
They looted eight more houses in Pirojpur's Badura Chithalia village the following day and torched them, he said.
“On a Thursday sometime in mid-June, I took a boat to Parer Haat to gather rations for freedom fighters…It was a haat day [weekly bazaar]…I stood in front of Masud's store and observed the atmosphere of the surrounding area,” Nabin said.
It was then that he saw Sayedee in the distance. “He was wearing a panjabi and lungi,” said Nabin, adding, “He carried a corrugated iron sheet in one hand, and brass utensils in a wooden basket on his head.”
Nabin watched Sayedee, then known as Delwar Hossain Shikder, make his way to a shop, which used to be known as “Panch Tahabil”.
He directed passerby Moulvi Nurul Haque's attention towards Sayedee and said, “See, Delwar Saheb is taking away the loot.”
Nabin, who carried a revolver then, turned angry and told Nurul Haque, “I will shoot this robber right now!”
“Nurul Haque stopped me and said if I created a scene the Pakistani occupation forces would torch the remaining houses too and commit genocide.”
Nabin then made his way towards another shop in the bazaar area where he learnt from locals that Madan Saha's shop had been looted. He then saw Sayedee appear with five men. They began demolishing Madan Saha's shop.
The looted goods were then taken to Sayedee's father-in-law's house in the area, Nabin said.
According to Nabin, the collaborators took over two shops in Parer Haat to store the booty. Sayedee was in charge of the shops, Nabin said.
Nabin told the court that during their stay in Parer Haat the Pakistani occupation forces raped a number of girls with the help of the collaborators.
The collaborators also forced 50 to 60 Hindus to convert to Islam. The victims included Rony Saha, Makhan Saha, Dr Ganesh Chandra, Dr Sudhir Chandra Roy, Gouranga and Ajit Chandra Roy, he added.
“Everyday, they were taken to mosques and forced to pray five times. They were also forced to learn two to four suras [verses of the holy Quran] and were provided with materials for prayers.”
Unable to accept the insult, many of them escaped to India, he added.
On June 21, 1971, Nabin along with a number of freedom fighters went to India to receive guerrilla training. On his return, he took part in armed warfare against the Pakistani occupation forces, Nabin said.
Nabin, along with his fellow freedom fighters, returned to Parer Haat on December 18. The freedom fighters then searched different houses to get hold of the collaborators.
While some were arrested, identified collaborators like Danesh Ali, Maulana Mosleh Uddin and Sayedee could not be apprehended, he said. “We came to know that they had fled,” Nabin told the court.
Some looted goods were recovered from the houses of the collaborators. They were handed back to their original owners.
On behalf of the freedom fighters and the victims of the atrocities committed during the Liberation War by the Pakistani occupation forces, Nabin pleaded for justice.

Source:http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=213400

The Indian preacher and the fake orphan scandal

An Indian missionary charity falsely portrayed young Buddhist girls from Nepal as "orphans" of murdered Christians in a global fund-raising operation involving British and American churches. 

Parents paid a child-trafficker more than £100 to take their daughters to good schools in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, but instead they were taken more than 1,200 miles to Tamil Nadu, southern India.

At the Michael Job Centre, a Christian orphanage and school in Coimbatore, they were converted to Christianity, given western names and told that its charismatic founder, Dr PP Job, was now their father.

On websites, the children were given serial numbers and profiles. The charity claimed they had been either abandoned by their parents who did not want the financial burden of raising girls, or orphaned after their "Christian" parents were murdered by Nepal's Maoist insurgents.

The profiles were used to attract financial sponsors from around the world.

Many of the donors were in the United States, Holland and Britain, where Dr Jobs's sister organisation, Love in Action, is run from St Mary's C of E Church in Stoke-sub-Hamdon, Somerset.

An anti-trafficking charity run by Lt Col Philip Holmes, a retired British Army officer, assisted Indian officials in a raid on the Coimbatore centre last month, when 23 children were rescued.
His group, the Esther Benjamins Trust, discovered that none of the children were from Christian families, very few were, in fact, orphans and some of the girls had been kept apart from their families for up to 10 years. Among those rescued were six girls from one extended Buddhist family in Humla district in northern Nepal who were all renamed on their first day at the Michael Job Centre.
One 17 year-old, "Daniele", whose real name is Tara, told The Daily Telegraph yesterday she was seven when she was taken from her village with her five-year-old sister, "Anna Bella", whose real name is Upaal. On the charity's website, "Daniele" is presented as "an orphan girl from the area bordering India and Nepal", while her sister is described as an orphan whose parents were killed by Maoists.
"There was nobody to take care of her. Our Nepal missionary brought her to the Michael Job Centre," her profile reads. "Anna Bella" is listed as child number 146, and "Daniele" 148, part of a batch of six girls including their four cousins who were renamed Tryphosa (143), Tryphena (150), Jael, and Persis (144).
"Daniele" said: "My mother and father couldn't afford our education and food. There was no threat from the Maoists. We are all Buddhists but now we have two religions.
"Our parents thought girl children should get married, and that if we got an education we would get money. They thought we were going to Kathmandu. They did not know it was a Christian school."
Dr Job, the "orphanage" founder, has left India for the United States, where he did not respond to enquiries. But in a letter to the Indian child welfare authority in Coimbatore last month, he admitted many of the Nepalese children were not orphans and blamed Dal Bahadur Phadera, the alleged trafficker who brought the girls to India, for misleading him.
"Most of the children mentioned were brought by Himalayan Orphanage Development Centre, Humla, run by Mr Dal Bahadur Phadera ... atthe time of admission it was brought to attention that the children are uncared [for] and that they are living within India. The children were neglected by the society and [were] in [the] orphanage. Till today we are taking care of children properly," he wrote.
The charity Love in Action raised around £18,000 for the Michael Job Centre between 2007 and 2010, but Tom Reeves, churchwarden at St Mary's, declined to comment on whether he and his colleagues had been duped.
Mr Phadera was unavailable for comment. A 2006 Unicef report said his organisation was acting in "direct violation of the international convention of children's rights".
In an interview with Avenues TV, a Nepalese channel, he denounced Lt Col Holmes's charity and its role in the raid. "At the time we took our children, there was conflict and we didn't have any problems that the school took our children. But this is a rescue done in the name of rescue. It's like they are looking for treatment when there is no need," he said.
Lt Col Holmes said he had no regrets over the raid. The trafficking of girls from Nepal was "a total abuse of child rights", he said.

By Dean Nelson, New Delhi

4:23PM BST 28 Oct 2011

Source: Telegraph