Shawdesh Desk:

Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Friday rejected allegations made by a Bangladeshi NGO official Preo Bala Biswas to US president Donald Trump over ‘disappearance’ and rights abuse of the religious minority in Bangladesh.

Once she returns, we will definitely seek evidence from her relating to the allegations,’ the minister said.

Asaduzzaman termed the allegations as ‘conspiracy’ and said it was ‘motivated’. He also observed that there was no such incident since his party came to power and since he moved into his office.

Preo Bala Biswas, the executive director of Self-Help Association for Rural People through Education and Entrepreneurship, or SHAREE, met the US president at the latter’s office in Washington DC on July 17 during a global forum. She was accompanied by 16 other representatives from different countries and of different faiths.

During the meeting, she alleged that Muslim fundamentalists in Bangladesh torched her house in Pirojpur and sought the US president’s assistance to prevent ‘disappearance’ of the members of the religious minority community in Bangladesh.

The video that went viral, shows Preo meeting the US president and saying ‘I am from Bangladesh. Here 37 million Hindus, Buddhists and Christians disappeared. Please help us … We want to stay in our country. Still there is [sic] 18 million minority people.’

She went on to say: Please help us. We do not want to leave our country. Just help up to stay. I have lost my home. They burnt my home and they have taken my land but there is no justice in sight.

The Christianity Today reported that in several meetings, she talked about her ancestral home in Pirojpur, one that she described as having been burnt by arsonists in 2019.

US media mistakenly referred to her as the general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council.

Hindu Buddhist Christian Oikya Parishad general secretary Rana Dasgupta said that Preo was one of their eight organisation secretaries and that his organisation was not aware of her attending the programme in the US.

He said that he thought that she, in one part of her speech, had expressed her helplessness after her paternal home was burnt down.

‘But I could not understand what she actually meant by uttering the word ‘disappear’, he asserted.

Referring to government censuses since Pakistan Period, he said that the number of religious minority people was decreasing in Bangladesh and that the economist had termed it as ‘missing population’.

Private television channel Somoy TV, meanwhile, reported that Earl R Miller, the US Ambassador to Bangladesh, in a function of Buddhist community in the capital’s Badda told the reporters that the statement of the Bangladeshi lady to the president Trump was not correct.