Almost 300 Christian children forcibly converted to Islam in Bangladesh

(September 07, 2012) Christian children from Tripuri tribes in Bangladesh, have been taken away from their villages and forcibly converted to Islam. Local Catholic sources, who asked their names be withheld, told Rome-based AsiaNews agency that almost 300 children have been taken to madrassas or Islamic schools. The technique is the same. Intermediaries, who are also ethnic Tripuri, visit poverty-stricken communities where they convince families to send their children to a mission hostel, charging between 6,000 and 15,000 taka for school and board. After pocketing the money, the intermediaries sell the children to Islamic schools elsewhere in the country. The latest case involved 11 children - ten boys and a girl, from Thanchi, Ruma and Lama in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Fortunately they were able to escape after six months of violence and threats, thanks to the Dhaka-based rights organization Hotline Human Rights Trust, run by a Catholic woman, Rosaline Costa.
Tripuri are one of the many tribal groups found in Bangladesh. Most are Christian, both Catholic and Protestants, especially in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, in south-eastern Bangladesh. Radical Muslims are engaged in a campaign against Christian missionaries whom they accuse of proselytising and forcibly converting others in order to create a Christian majority in the area so that it can be annexed to India. In the latest case, the first eight boys were taken in January and February and brought to the Darul Huda Islami School in Mia Para village in Gazipur. A girl was placed in a madrassa in Muhammadpur, Dhaka. Two other boys were brought to another Darul Huda Islami in Maddha Badda (Gulshan, Dhaka). Their days included Arabic lessons, Qur'an reading and five daily prayers.