Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) has sent letters to the heads of the United Nations (UN), United Nation's High Commission for Human Rights (UNHRC) and the European Union and urged the international bodies to stop Hindu "genocide" in Bangladesh.

In the letters to the three prominent world bodies, the joint general-secretary and the head of international affairs of VHP, Swami Vigyananand urged to set up an international enquiry commission and send a fact-finding mission to Bangladesh. He also said that the government of Bangladesh should be pressurised to ensure security, justice and compensation to the victims.

"The current spate of the genocide of the indigenous minority Hindus in Bangladesh, which continues unabated. The brutal killings of innocents, in more than 22 districts over the past 10-12 days, violate any notion of humanity. The radical Islamists caused despair and terror among devotees by forcibly entering places of worship during the sacred Durga Puja and jubilantly vandalizing and breaking icons of deities and destroying shrines. A dozen Hindus were slaughtered, a thousand injured. Horrifyingly, Hindu women and small girls were raped in front of family members and homes and businesses were looted and burnt as well. The police and law enforcement authorities were mute spectators, intervening too late to prevent the atrocities," Swami Vigyananand said in a statement.

Swami Vigyananand also sought to give exemplary punishment to the perpetrators of crime and urged the bodies to take action against "proscribe criminal Jihadi organisations and repeal the Vested Property Act 2013".

Swami Vigyananand also said that the fate of Hindu and other minorities has been grim in the region for over a century and evidently, a final chapter of their destruction is occurring in full view of the world.

According to the VHP, during the partition of India in 1947, an estimated 2 million Hindus in the eastern half of Bengal were "killed" and countless millions fled to India. These horrors continued, with one million Hindus "killed" again in 1950 and another five million fleeing to safety in India with thousands "slaughtered" in 1964, prompting another surge of fleeing refugees.

Recalling past, the VHP said that the events of 1971, the "murder" of 2-3 million and imprisoning over 4,00,000 women and girls in "rape camps" by the Pakistani army need no recounting.

"Unfortunately, the persecution of minorities continued in independent Bangladesh and the current episode is only the latest of numerous recorded by the UN itself and governments abroad, like the US," the VHP said.

"It is, therefore, no surprise that the population of the mainly Hindu minority in Bangladesh, which was almost a third at partition in 1947, has declined to approximately 8 per cent and respected Bangladeshi demographers predict it will fall to zero by 2050”, VHP added further.

Image Courtesy: PTI