Indigenous Christian village in Bangladesh burned to the ground on Christmas

DHAKA, Bangladesh (OSV News) -- An Indigenous Christian village was burnt to the ground just after midnight on Christmas Day in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

The attack occurred in the Bandarban district of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in southeastern Bangladesh, bordering Myanmar, at around 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 25. The area is in the Catholic Archdiocese of Chittagong, also called Chattogram.

The attack occurred while residents were away attending midnight Mass in a neighboring village, as there is no church in their village. Nobody was in the village when the attack took place, the OpIndia website reported.

"There are 19 families living in the ... village and 25 houses of 19 families are totally gutted due to the arson attack. Now they are out of the village and living in their relatives' villages," Father Rocky Costa, parish priest of the local St. Peter's Catholic Church told OSV News.

The priest said that only one Catholic family was living in the village and others were Protestant, but he said Archbishop Lawrence Subrata Howlader of Chattogram demanded justice for all Christians left homeless.

Archbishop Bejoy Nicephorus D'Cruze of Dhaka strongly condemned the attack and asked for justice and compensation for the "heinous incident."

"These Indigenous peoples are vulnerable and they are also deprived of justice. So, I want to say this is inhuman," the prelate told OSV News.

The village has long been home to the Tripura Indigenous Christian community, but they were forcibly evicted a few years ago.

According to the villagers, they were living there for at least three generations. But a few years ago "a few powerful men" evicted them. This happened during the rule of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India in August after she was ousted by mass protests. After the fall of Hasina government, Tripura people built their house anew in the village and only recently moved in. Now their life lies in ruins once again.

"We have no church building in the Tongjhiri village and that's why we went to another village to celebrate Christmas Eve on Dec 24. That night the culprits burned everything," Lalmon Tripura, 26, told OSV News.

"We have no extra clothes, we are suffering from the food crisis and we are living in an open sky," Tripura added. "We demand justice and proper rehabilitation with compensation."

Local police arrested seven suspects in the arson attack.

The current government in Bangladesh has asked police to unearth the motive behind the attack as soon as possible.

Local authorities provided immediate food and relief materials to the families.

However, human rights activists Mikel Chakma told OSV News that this type of attack is not a novelty and that ethnic cleansing is happening under state policies.

"If the state took proper initiative after previous incidents, I think these types of heinous activities might be stopped," the activist said.

Archbishop D'Cruze asked the government for investigation, justice, rehabilitation and compensation.

Christians account for less than half a percent of more than 170 million people in the Muslim-majority South Asian nation of Bangladesh.