Indigenous Christians are living in fear after violence by land grabbers from the Muslim-majority community in Bangladesh’s Rajshahi district.
At least 10 Christians were beaten while two of them landed in hospital in critical condition in Badhair village in the Tanore area of the northern district in the past week.
The village is home to more than 200 indigenous people, mostly Christians. They are now scared to step out of their homes. The men fear going to the market while children are not being sent to school, say locals.
The cause for the attacks is 12,500 square meters of khas land (government-owned fallow land) on which 23 indigenous families have been settled for years. Some influential people want to remove them and occupy the land themselves.
Biplob Tudu, 40, an indigenous Santal who was taken to Tanor subdistrict hospital in critical condition, said he was attacked while returning home from the market in a three-wheeled vehicle on Jan. 3.
“I was accosted by a mob of around 10 Muslims who pulled me out of the three-wheeler and beat me with rods. They broke my bones,” Tudu, a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, told.