The Bangladeshi government has welcomed moves by a US congressional panel to remove it from a list of countries deemed to violate religious freedoms, BBC online reports Friday.
The decision is a vindication of the new government’s determination to protect minorities, a spokesman in the prime ministers office said. The panel ruled that Bangladesh’s elections in December were “relatively free of violence”.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom report said that the winning party in the Bangladesh elections, the Awami League, was “more favourably disposed towards minority rights protection”.
“The 2008 elections allowed for minorities to exercise their voting rights and proceeded without the anti-minority violence that followed the last national elections of 2001,” the report said.
“At that time the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led government failed to investigate or prosecute acts of severe violence, including killings, rapes, land seizures, arson and extortion against religious minorities – especially Hindus”, it noted.
