As an individual from one country who often finds himself protesting the actions of another, I frequently am told that doing so or demanding change is an affront to a nation’s sovereignty. That is seriously ironic, considering the continuous demands placed on my country, the United States, and my people’s country, Israel. Bangladeshi officials and governments, for instance, have demanded that Israel withdraw from territory, give free reign to Hamas terrorists committed to its destruction, release murderers of its people, give away its capital Jerusalem, create and fund a hostile state, and so forth. Some have demanded the US quit Iraq or close the terrorist holding base at Guantanamo. So be it; that is their prerogative.

It is, however, quite disingenuous for representatives of that same government to try and avoid their own country’s responsibility for its actions by complaining that my protests of its persecution of journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury insult its sovereignty. It reminds me of a debate I had last year in the public square of a West Bengal village where I interviewed Hindu victims of Islamist attacks. The ruling Communist Party (CPIM) was trying to intimidate the residents into silence and the local commissar told me that “only the CPIM is allowed to solve our problems.”

“What?” I said outraged. “I should think that a moral government would first and foremost want its problems solved then worry about who gets credit for it!”

Hence, the irony of an inefficient Bangladesh complaining about my solutions to its long known problems of oppressing dissidents and journalists.

The protests are falling ever more on deaf ears in today’s global society. With examples in front of us from Darfur, Rwanda, and elsewhere, it is very difficult for moral individuals to buy that “sovereignty” defense as a justification for the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus, who have fallen from almost one in five Bangladeshis to fewer than one in ten.

People around the world, however, hoped that December’s free and open elections meant that was changing. They were ready to accept the new government’s promises that it would move Bangladesh away from a past that has been characterized by suppression of individual rights and minority oppression, patronization of Islamist radicalism, and massive corruption whereby leaders enriched themselves while impoverishing the nation. After 60 days in office, however, the Awami League (AL) already is blowing that goodwill.

The AL presented itself as the party that would end the oppression of Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh, and it was successful in thereby getting the minority vote and an assumption of honesty in those claims. Yet, from its very first day in office, the AL had a golden opportunity to show everyone just how serious it is about ending that oppression; but it never even came close to taking it. It has thus far taken no action to repeal the Bangladesh’s racist Vested Property Act (VPA); a law that even otherwise careful officials have labeled “a black law that [the new] government must repeal.” Imagine what it would have done to boost optimism among Bangladeshis and improve the country’s standing worldwide if within the first few days of taking office Sheikh Hasina said her government would repeal the VPA and thereby end a shameful chapter in her nation’s history. It would not be very different than US President Barack Obama’s recent address to Congress in which he stated loudly and clearly that he will close the US base at Guantanamo. Closing Guantanamo is even more complex than repealing the VPA, but Obama’s statement indicated his determination to make it happen nonetheless even without actually doing it yet. The fact that the AL has given no indication that things will be any different under its rule while at the same time doing nothing to stop the daily attacks on Bangladeshi minorities is slowly eroding the optimism with which it was greeted.

The AL’s other mistake was allowing a gang to invade the office of dissident journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, severely beat the peace activist, and refuse to leave the premises. There is extensive evidence showing that the attackers were Awami League activists, which according to reliable sources, is why the police have refused to press the case against them. The incident is already causing a great deal of consternation in Washington, where the admittedly false charges against Shoaib Choudhury have been the reason why several pieces of pro-Bangladesh trade legislation have been defeated without ever getting out of committee. Assessing the government’s actions and knowing that the Bangladeshi Embassy has a pretty good understanding of them one individual who works with Congress told me on conditions of anonymity that people wonder if “Dhaka even looks at anything coming out of the embassy.” Another Washington insider said that at this point, “words won’t cut it and if the Bangladeshis have any hope of tariff relief, they will have to take action first in the Choudhury case.”

Given Congress’ pre-occupation with the economy and President Obama’s promise to cut the deficit by 50 percent, individual foreign aid appropriations are likely to come under increased scrutiny. In such an atmosphere decisive action might be the only way to avert deep cuts in US aid based on the Bangladesh government’s failure to address oppression of dissidents and minorities or to comply with House Resolution 64 on the case of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.

Tags: Bangladesh, hindu, Politics

Dhaka, Bangladesh—At 10am today, local time, internationally-acclaimed journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, was attacked as he was working in the office of his newspaper, Weekly Blitz, by “a gang of thugs” claiming to be from Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League.  I spoke by telephone with Choudhury as he awaited medical treatment for eye, neck, and other injuries suffered in the attack.  The renewed violence marks the first against him since he was abducted by Bangladesh’s dreaded Rapid Action Battalion a year ago.

A large group stormed Blitz premises and attacked newspaper staff until they found Choudhury.  At that point, he said, “they dragged me [and two staff] into the street” where they beat them “in broad daylight…They looted my office and stole my laptop” with “all my sensitive information.  As of this writing, the attackers continue to occupy the Blitz office.

According to Choudhury, the police were impassive and seemed intimidated when the attackers emphasized their party membership and accused him of being an agent of the Israeli Mossad.  They later threatened to attack his home should Choudhury go to the police again.

Choudhury was arrested in 2003 by government agents, in cooperation with Islamist forces, because of his advocacy of relations with Israel and religious equality, and his articles exposing the rise of radical Islam in Bangladesh.  He was tortured and held for seventeen months and only released after strong pressure by human rights activist Dr. Richard Benkin and US Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL).  In 2007, the US Congress passed a Kirk-introduced resolution 409-1 calling on Bangladesh to stop harassing Choudhury and drop capital charges against him after extensive evidence confirmed them to be false, contrary to Bangladeshi law, and as admitted by successive Bangladeshi officials, maintained only to appease Islamists.  The Bangladeshi government continues to remain in defiance of that resolution and its provisions.

Tags: Bangladesh, journalist, violence

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 1, 2009

CONTACT: Richard L. Benkin, Ph.D.; +1-847-922-6426;

drrbenkin@comcast.net; http://www.InterfaithStrength.com

Sydney, Australia—A conference that was to “debate” charging Israel with war crimes was canceled, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, after “revelations the convener had made anti-Semitic remarks.” Maqsood Alshams, a reputed human rights activist made inflammatory and highly derogatory anti-Semitic statements to Dr. Richard L. Benkin of Chicago in emails and over the telephone. Alshams had previously asserted that his passionate anti-Israeli animus was based on his commitment to human rights for all people. When Benkin asked him why he had no sympathy for the children of Sderot and other Jewish communities facing Hamas rocket fire, Alshams said it was because “you Jews are m**herf****ng b**t*rds.” Alshams repeated these comments to Benkin and had made similarly revealing statements to others.

Benkin revealed Alshams’ underlying motives to several members of Australia’s Jewish community. They got the information to the Jewish Board of Deputies who got it to the press. Two days later, the conference (which was to be held at an official building) was canceled after several participants withdrew and distanced themselves from Alshams.

Benkin, Founder of Interfaith Strength, is an anti-terrorist and human rights activist. Like many others, he is committed to unmasking the anti-Jewish hatred that is the real basis for many Israel-bashers, who cloak themselves in disingenuous human rights language—a ruse that, unfortunately, many in the media and elsewhere reinforce.

Benkin is available for interviews and commentary and can be contacted at the telephone or email above.

Tags: anti-semitism, israel, jew, muslim

On Saturday, December 27, 2008, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out a massive air strike on Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the terrorist group’s continued rocket fire on Israeli civilians. The attack, dubbed “Cast Lead” was directed at Hamas security installations, training camp, weapons manufacturing plants, and other Hamas military facilities. Sources from both sides of the conflict admit that there was not a single Hamas facility that did not suffer major damage. A report by Israel National News said that experts called it “the most lethal single day of bombing in the region in at least 41 years.” The casualty count is 282 dead (including several top Hamas commanders) and 330 wounded, but that should rise as more bodies are recovered from the rubble. Even Arab sources are admitting that Israel managed to keep the casualties almost entirely to Hamas fighters. All Israeli planes and pilots returned home unharmed.

In 2005, Israel unilaterally evacuated the Gaza Strip after 38 year there with to give the Palestinian Arabs a chance to run their own area. Jewish groups purchased the hot houses previously used by evacuating Israelis to successfully grow vegetables in the arid Gaza soil; and they donated the hot houses to the Palestinians. It was hoped that the agricultural bounty provided by the hot houses, along with the extensive Gazan employment in Israel would be the basis for a successful Gaza economy. Almost immediately, however, the plans started to unfurl. Video footage showed Arabs triumphantly desecrating evacuated synagogues and destroying infrastructure left for them by the evacuating Israelis. The hot houses were destroy or misused by Arabs and never produced the product that had produced earlier. Moreover, in January 2006, Hamas won an electoral victory in Gaza and in June 2007, ousted all Fatah forces in a military takeover. Soon after that, Hamas turned Gaza into a base for terrorist attacks on Israel, forcing the latter to close the crossings that brought both terrorists and workers into Israel. Since 2005, Palestinian Arabs have fired over 6,000 missiles onto Israeli civilians, according to Israeli and Arab sources.

Israeli defensive efforts put an end to Hamas’ suicide bombers and terror attacks on the Jewish state and so Hamas and its surrogates began firing rockets and missiles indiscriminately into Israeli civilian areas located in the Negev region in Israel’s south. After the Hamas-Hezbollah War in the summer of 2006, the Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce. Every Hamas truce—or hudna–is temporary and engaged in only until the terror group believes it might have the strength to fight Israel. That war was started by an unprovoked raid by Hamas into Israeli territory and its kidnapping of Israeli, Gilad Shalit. Hamas has refused to allow the Red Cross or other international bodies see Shalit, and his fate remains unclear to this day. Despite the hudna, there were regular rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas until Israeli efforts forced a temporary halt. But on December 19, Hamas unilaterally voided continuation of the truce and resumed regular rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. In the week that followed, the terror group launched over 200 rockets onto Israeli civilian areas. Ultimately, that is what forced Israel’s hand.

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Tags: conflict, israel, middle-east, palestine, war

With the scheduled date for national elections fast approaching, the Awami League (AL) continues its decades-long courtship of Bangladesh’s minorities. Its 2008 “election manifesto” identifies five “priority issues” and buried as one of seven points under the fifth priority is:

“Use of religion and communalism in politics will be banned. Security and rights of religious and ethnic minorities will be ensured. Courtesy and tolerance will be inculcated in the political culture of the country. Militancy and extortion will be banned. Awami League will take initiative to formulate a consensual and unanimous charter of political behavior.”

To be sure, the AL is on solid ground when it urges minorities to reject the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) with its long history of coddling Islamist radicals. There is nonetheless a real question of the AL’s commitment to these ideals aside from the total befuddlement among all observers about how it would implement these high-sounding principles. AL has yet to say how it will ban “use of religion and communalism in politics.” How does it propose to stop such things as leaflets being distributed in districts with minority candidates, as reported in The Daily Star? The paper notes that leaflets distributed in the Thakurgaon-I district urges voters to reject AL candidate Ramesh Chandra Sen because he is a Hindu and uses verses from the Quran to try and convince voters. Another leaflet was entitled “Al-Quraner-Bani” and asks Muslims not to vote for any non-Muslim candidate. According to an election officer, however, these things already are legal. How the AL would make sure these things do not happen is something they never have spelled out.

Moreover, the AL’s history should not encourage religious minorities. By now, all Bangladeshis recall the AL’s shameful agreement with Khelafat Majlis (KM) in December 2006. In that MOU, the AL discarded all pretense of being a party committed to minority rights when it agreed not only to let the Islamist party into its coalition if it won the election, but it would all the KM to proceed with implementing Sharia Law on all citizens. Fortunately, the elections scheduled for the following month were postponed, but the AL’s action revealed that its members are far more concerned about winning an election no matter what it means for millions of Bangladeshi citizen.

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Tags: Bangladesh, election, hindu, Politics

Less than a week after the Mumbai terror attacks, United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was in South Asia trying to “reduce tensions” between India and Pakistan. (Funny, we did not see her flying around the United States with the same message after the Islamists’ 9/11 attacks.) By the time she arrived in the area, Pakistani support for the Deccan Mujahadeen and their parent Lashkar-i-Taiba was a well-known and accepted fact. Rice’s goal was to convince Pakistan to take some obvious actions to defuse Indian anger over its involvement in the attacks. It worked, too. Pakistan did go after Lashkar-i-Taiba and made some arrests, but it would surprise no one if the arrests are short-lived and the terrorist group is not back in business soon. The real upshot of the effort was a bevy of calls for US President-elect Barack Obama to find a “regional solution” to the conflicts in South Asia. And that should scare the heck out of everyone.

The notion of a regional solution entails throwing the many “regional” conflicts and issues in one pot and trying to determine which ones have priority for the major parties in the way of “solutions.” In a very broad way, it makes sense; but when it comes down to specifics, these approaches always fail. (Just look at their record in the Middle East.) Moreover, the solutions involve satisfying some of the combatants while ignoring others; securing rights for some in the region, while ignoring those of others; then assuming that the unsatisfied parties will decide to play nice. Given the recent focus on Kashmir and US interests in Afghanistan, that area will be the subject of these efforts. Deeper conflicts between India and Pakistan and between Hindus and Muslims in the area will be ignored. Moreover, is there anyone who believes a regional solution will address the ethnic cleansing of the Bangladeshi Hindus? This is no small matter, and the results of ignoring the carnage should feel all too familiar.

Our history of responding to genocide and ethnic cleansing is a sad one. The international community response seems to respond only after the bodies are piled too high to ignore. Pious statements of condemnation, memorials for the victims, and studied outrage are indeed the order of the day—but onlyafter our inaction allowed far too many deaths, most of them brutal. European Nazis murdered six million Jews in the 1940s. In the 1960s, Fulani-led Nigerians slaughtered around a million ethnic Ibos who formed the Republic of Biafra. Three decades later, majority Hutus murdered almost a million Tutsis in Rwanda; and Serbs did the same to about 10,000 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. And the humiliating saga continues without end. Ethnic Arabs are still killing non-Arab Sudanese; so far over half a million. While there have been smaller mass killings, too, these crimes grabbed the world’s attention—albeit too late for the victims. The United Nations (UN) issued proclamations and sent aid through its human rights and refugee organizations. Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch, and others loudly condemned the perpetrators, documenting the atrocities and raising money for their aid programs. Several international celebrities took on highly visible roles, and massive protests worldwide gave vent to peoples’ outrage.

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Tags: Bangladesh, hindu, Politics

Albert Einstein once said “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” What happened in Mumbai in the closing days of November 2008 was evil. The terrorists who planned and financed it were evil. The terrorists who carried it out were evil. And the terrorists who provided tactical and other support were evil. That should surprise no one. People long have known the depths of depravity to which radical Islam is capable of sinking. Have they not given us ample evidence?

 Just since the September 11, 2001 bombings that killed over 3000 Americans, radical Islamists have carried out over 11,000 terror attacks worldwide. While they were not the first to use suicide bombers or hijack airplanes, Islamists carried both to new heights as their principle weapons of terror. They have blown up schools and students, driven busses into crowds of people, set off terror bombs on public transportation and elsewhere in dozens of countries throughout Asia and Europe. Their leaders openly call for genocide against Jews and Hindus, and their followers are trying to carry out those calls. Wherever they have had the power to do so, they deliberately destroy religious shrines and houses of worship and brag about it as step in destroying other faiths or variants of Islam. And then they have the gall to claim that these things were done because they were angry at some perceived offense, frustrated at their current living conditions, or defending their own warped conception of human rights. So, while terrible, are the events that unfolded in ten locations across Mumbai anything new or surprising? Did the terrorists do anything they have not promised us they would do?

The tragedy is that these events could have been prevented. Radical Islam has been warning the rest of us that it means to re-make our planet in its own image and kill anybody that threatens to stand in its way. Its practitioners have vowed repeatedly to destroy India as an abomination against Islam; yet its leaders act as if they were only kidding. Despite the country experiencing almost non-stop Islamist attacks, the ruling Congress Party maintains a strict policy of non-confrontation with home-grown Muslims who support the radical organizations. It recently showed far more zeal in prosecuting an alleged “Hindu terrorist” after a bomb went off in a predominantly Muslim town. The accused Hindu priest was interrogated several times, despite the fact that her only tie to the bombing was a car used in the attack, which 38 year-old Sadhwi Pragya Singh Thakur had sold years before. In a policy of appeasement similar to Britain’s (which was also a target in the Mumbai attacks), that same government deliberately refrains from identifying terrorists as Muslim.

Indian Hindus often complain that the government is not carrying out its mandate of secularism but practices a “pseudo-secularism” that bends over backwards to favor minorities even if it means heaping disabilities on Hinduism or Hindus. Its recently-passed budget contained millions in subsidies for Muslims to go on the Hajj to Mecca and pilgrimages to Jerusalem; but not a penny for the numerous but uncounted Hindu refugees from Islamist ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh. Other groups are agitating because the government took possession of Hindu temples but refuses to maintain them.

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Tags: india, Islam, israel, mumbai, muslim, terrorism

On November 1, 2008, I delivered the Arvind Ghosh Memorial Lecture to the Human Empowerment Convention in suburban Chicago. The address was interrupted more than a half dozen times with applause and received a standing ovation at its conclusion. The following are excerpts from that address.

“Some years back, my mother, wife, and daughter were sitting in a Jerusalem restaurant enjoying a meal. Not many weeks later, a Palestinian terrorist entered the restaurant and blew himself up, [and] I realized that had my mother, my wife, and my daughter been there that day, the murderers would have considered their deaths something glorious…. Anyone who could glory in the deaths of my mother, my wife, and my daughter is an enemy so vile that…there can be no quarter, no negotiation, no compromise; and in the fight against it there can be no rest….

“Why is there any question about the need to fight them unrelentingly and to destroy them utterly….Our enemy’s expressed goals are to destroy our faiths, our values, our ways of life….Fuzzy thinking about this can destroy us, and…no matter [who] tries to convince us otherwise, [we] must remain focused on what we have to do to defeat them….This enemy has a name, and we need to use it: radical Islam. Not terrorism, which is only a tactic; or unspecified radicals, militants, or whatever politically correct word is in fashion but Islamist radicals….If we are engaged in a war on ‘terror,’ we are [merely] reacting to a tactic [and] not engaged in a comprehensive effort to defeat the terrorists and those who send them. If our enemies are merely “the extremists,” we have [abandoned] the search for any ideology…that unites those extremists and motivates them. [That] dilutes our struggle, weakens us, and strengthens our enemies…radical Islamists.

“An alliance of Israel, India, and the United States…can [easily] dispose of the terrorists and the national leaders that support them…Look at what each nation has done by itself. Ever since its 1948 birth, Israel has been bedeviled by nation-states and terrorist groups determined to destroy it. It is the only nation on earth that has never known a day of peace….Invaded by multiple Arab militaries in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973…Israel beat them all back so thoroughly, that they had to change tactics and send terror proxies to do their work…. But the terrorists have failed, too. Suicide bombings [and rocket strikes from Gaza] have been virtually eliminated….In a 2007 conversation with an Israeli insider, I noted how the number of terror attacks dropped significantly, even though the terrorists keep trying….‘Let me tell you a secret,’ he whispered, smiling. ‘We stop most of them in their beds.’ Israel has survived; more than that, it has thrived to become one of the world’s technological giants….

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Tags: Bangladesh, Hinduism, india, israel, Politics

For 17 months starting in November 2003, I was fighting to free anti-Islamist journalist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury from prison. Quite often, I was alone in this fight, but even when people joined me, I knew that it was my responsibility to bring about his freedom. The Bangladeshis arrested journalist Shoaib Choudhury after he wrote articles exposing the rise of radical Islam in his country and their use of madrassas to recruit more Bangladeshis to their cause. He also advocated interfaith understanding based on religious equality—something radical Islamists considered heresy—and relations with Israel; he tried to go there, too, but the Bangladeshi government refused to him.

And Shoaib Choudhury is a Muslim. Yet, this Muslim has done more actual work to stop the rise of radical Islam and the genocide of innocents than almost all the individuals and organizations that claim to be working on behalf of the minorities. Oh, I know they are being honest when they say they want to help the Bangladeshi Hindus; many travel all over the world saying that. But is the life of Bangladeshi Hindus any better because of it? Is there anyone who can say their lives are better than they were, say ten years ago? Is radical Islam any less a threat to all Bengalis than it was back then? Is the racist Vested Property Act any less a law today than before? And have the murders, rapes, and other crimes against the Bangladeshi Hindus stopped or even lessened? No, no, no, no, and no!

Every day of those 17 months, I reminded myself that if I did not act, if I took a day off, if I decided to let other people do what is needed; then that would mean one more day of imprisonment and torture for the man who is now my brother; one more day when radical Islam could crush those who oppose them. This is exactly what we are facing with the Bangladeshi Hindus. As I told the Indian media earlier this year, “It strikes me how everyone in India knows what’s happening to the Bangladeshi Hindus, but no one is doing anything about it.” Each day without effective action against this genocide-to-be means more murders, more young girls raped, more Hindu children raised as Muslims and forced conversions, more villages once Hindu taken over by Muslims—and less time before it is too late to save the Bangladeshi Hindus and stop the radical Islamists.

That is why we must act now! But there are other reasons as well. Bangladesh is in somewhat of disarray and is expected to hold elections next month with political alliances less certain than they have been in decades. A few officials in private conversations have told me they are ready to repeal the racist Vested Property Act when the next government takes power. A new administration is about to take office in the United States and could be vulnerable to an early human rights effort. Otherwise, signs point to it coming to terms with radical Islam even if it means the end of Bengali Hinduism. There are even promising signs in India. Congress is more open than before having just jettisoned its Communist allies over the United States nuclear deal. And this year, the CPIM suffered defeats in local West Bengal elections for the first time in decades. When I visited Bangladeshi Hindu refugee camps earlier this year, the only politician to go with me was from the Congress Party.

I am an American Jew who has taken up the fight to save Bangladeshi Hindus—in East and West Bengal, where they should find comfort and aid from fellow Hindus. It is my own fight, too; these are my own people. I have visited their refugee camps. I have listened to the words of their children. They are in my heart forever, and I must do what I can to save them!

So where does that leave us?

First, recognize that the time for empty speeches and meetings that lead nowhere is over. An organization or individual that claims to stand for the Bangladeshi Hindus must show that stance with action. Is there anyone among us who is surprised to learn about another rape or murder in Bangladesh or even West Bengal? While it is important to continue documenting these atrocities, the only reason for the mass emails about them is to spur people to action—to do something about it. That could be providing aid and shelter to the victim, public protests, forcing the prosecution of the perpetrator, and so forth. And our only measure of success must be the condition of the Bangladeshi Hindus.

Second, we must put aside our individual egos and recognize that our goal and the welfare of the Bangladeshi Hindus is far more important than any of us as individuals. If we can accomplish something for the people, is it important who gets the credit for it or the praise? But too many people still put themselves or their organizations above the welfare of the Bangladeshi Hindus—and that is a betrayal of our people.

Third, we must organize an umbrella organization that coordinates action to stop ethnic cleansing and prevent genocide. No person or group should be asked to give up their independence, but if we are to succeed in helping these people, we will do so if organized and united. Our enemies certainly are! In fact, I am engaged in such an effort in the United States and want to do the same in India and elsewhere. Let us not dissipate our energies and resources on events that do little good for the people. Let us maximize their impact for the Bangladeshi Hindus.

And fourth, we must commit ourselves to helping these people; to remain focused on results rather than our efforts; to refuse any half measures or offers of money and position that do not include a complete cessation of ethnic cleansing, and end to all persecution of the Bangladeshi Hindus. If an American Jew can come to India to defend Hindus, why would not every one of the 800 billion Hindus in India do the same?

Stand with me and fight to stop the atrocities not just cry about them!

Those who wish to join me—and I will do it alone if I have to—can contact me via email at drrbenkin@comcast.net or visit my web site http://www.InterfaithStrength.com and please help by donating to our cause.

Tags: Bangladesh, hindu, Hinduism, terrorism

[Prologue: Dr. Richard Benkin, a great supporter of Bangladeshi Hindus is going to be traveling to India and then Bangladesh soon for a campaign to end violence and genocide against Hindus. However, he needs support from like minded people to carry out this initiative. Therefore, I would like to request everyone if you have the capability, to please donate to his organization fund to help him succeed in this endeavor.]

Since 2003, I have been fighting Islamist terror in South Asia. In that year, the Bangladeshi government arrested a journalist for daring to expose the rise of Islamist radicals in that country and urge relations with Israel. In return he was arrested, held incommunicado, and tortured. The Bangladeshi government did this because it counted on the silence of the rest of the world. But we refused to be silent and fought until Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury was free.

Eventually, I turned my attention to the Islamists’ ethnic cleansing of Bangladeshi Hindus, a genocide waiting to happen and one the world would otherwise ignore until the bodies were stacked too high for it to ignore. But we are making progress everyday, informing people and politicians about this human rights tragedy and how it poses a threat to the entire world.

But our efforts have not been cheap. They involve regular trips to Washington and elsewhere to drum up support in the United States. I have also been to Bangladesh to stand with my oppressed brother in arms. And I have toured the refugee camps in West Bengal for the Bangladeshi Hindus. I have traveled elsewhere in India fighting Islamists and encouraging Hindus and other freedom fighters, as well, and expect to return in 2009.

Thus far, all of these efforts have been carried out without outside funding, and I am asking all people who know of my work and my commitment to see this through until our enemies are defeated to please, please help by donating whatever you can and encouraging others to do the same.

Your donation of whatever size will be saving the lives of innocents who the world would otherwise let die.

Tags: benkin, cause, donation, hindu, richard