please repeal the "enemy property act"




		An Appeal to the Caretaker Government: Please repeal the so called "Enemy Property Act!" A seminal work was published in 1997 by Professor Abul Barakat of Dhaka University, 'Inquiry into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act'. This demonstrated that 925,050 Hindu households (40% of Hindu families in Bangladesh) have been affected by the Enemy Property Act. This included 748,850 families dispossessed of agricultural land. The total amount of land lost by Hindu households as a result of this discriminatory act was estimated at 1.64 million acres, which is equivalent to 53 per cent of the total land owned by the Hindu community and 5.3 per cent of the total land area of Bangladesh. Successive governments of Bangladesh have promised to repeal the act, but to date, some 35 years after independence, none has done so. The first government of Bangabondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had vowed to repeal any laws that contradicted the values of the newly liberated country; even though the Enemy Property Act was in clear violation of the non-communal constitution that had been established, the law was not repealed and confiscation of property continued unabated. Should the present caretaker government repeal the act when time is running out very quickly? -Gopal Sengupta Canada [email protected]