On October 1, 2025, in Geneva, amid the polished wood of the United Nations Human Rights Council chamber, a side event dared to say out loud what diplomats have spent decades pretending not to see: South Asia is once again sinking into the quagmire of state-enabled extremism — and women, children, and minorities are paying the price. The event, “Indo-Mediterranean: Women and Children Are Extremism’s First Victims,” pulled no punches. European lawmakers, senators, and activists lined up to expose the rising tide of religious persecution and gender-based violence in Pakistan and Bangladesh. What emerged was less a revelation than a reaffirmation of what the region has been allowed to become: a theatre of terror for the vulnerable, and a safe space for the powerful to shrug.Erik Selle, leader of Norway’s Christian Conservative Party spoke of an “empowerment vacuum” under the Interim Government of Muhammad Yunus, of how women’s rights are being trampled, of how minorities are hunted with impunity. He didn’t need to embellish; the numbers and blood already speak. Bangladesh’s Interim Leader has publicly dismissed reports of anti-Hindu violence as “fake news.” Of course. Because nothing says “responsible governance” like denying violence instead of stopping it.Meanwhile, European Parliamentarian Anna Maria Cisint drew the crucial line between repression at home and its echo abroad. Migrant women from Bangladesh and Pakistan face forced burqa-wearing and control over their bodily autonomy in Italy. Extremism does not respect borders; it exports itself. Let’s be honest: Bangladesh is not just at risk of becoming again East Pakistan — it’s already rehearsing the part. The targeting of Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians isn’t new. It is a well-worn script written in 1947, edited in 1971, and now being revived with depressing accuracy. The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council recorded 258 incidents of communal violence in the first half of 2025 alone — including 27 murders. That’s not “fake news.” That’s a system functioning exactly as intended. Since 1974, Bangladesh’s minority population has dropped from 14.6% to 8.6%. Unofficially, the numbers are even lower. You don’t need a demographer to explain why — when temples burn, when land is seized, when women are assaulted, minorities do what anyone would do: flee. And while they flee, Dhaka’s ruling class holds press conferences to deny the existence of smoke rising from their own fires. Pakistan, of course, has made persecution a state sport. Since 1990, at least 65 people have been killed over blasphemy accusations — with local police either looking away or, too often, cheering along. Over a thousand Hindu girls are forcibly converted every year. Some of them are barely teenagers; many end up “married” to their abductors. Courts — paragons of justice that they are — usually declare them “consenting adults.” Sindh, home to what remains of Pakistan’s Hindu community, now resembles a slow-motion erasure project. In June 2025, four Hindu children were abducted from Shahdadpur, converted at gunpoint, and celebrated as “new Muslims.” The state, as always, yawned. Minorities in Pakistan have shrunk from 14.2% in 1951 to less than 3.5% today. That’s not demographic drift; that’s systematic displacement wrapped in legal impunity.The response from both governments is predictable. Dhaka calls it fake news. Islamabad calls it religion. And the international community calls another meeting in Geneva. The UN, ever polite and terminally indecisive, has spent decades “expressing concern” about the persecution of minorities in South Asia. “Expressing concern” is, after all, what it does best. But Geneva’s testimonies this October felt different — less like hand-wringing and more like a warning. Women, children, and minorities are not just collateral damage. They are the frontline victims of a deliberate ideological project that seeks to rewrite the region’s pluralist past into a monochrome future. Bangladesh’s current trajectory isn’t an aberration; it’s a pattern. It mirrors what happened in Pakistan decades ago — when the state allowed extremist forces to eat away at its democratic fabric, one “exception” at a time. We know how that story ended: a society where blasphemy laws kill, minorities vanish, and fanaticism sits comfortably in the cabinet room. Dhaka’s denial today is Islamabad’s history yesterday. For Europe and the broader international community, the Geneva event was a mirror. Extremism born in Dhaka or Lahore doesn’t stay in Dhaka or Lahore. It lands in Rome, Paris, Toronto. It travels through families, networks, mosques, political movements. Pretending otherwise isn’t strategy; it’s surrender. South Asia stands at a fork in the road — one path leads to accountability, the other to another generation of disappearances, rapes, forced conversions, and mass displacements written off as “unfortunate incidents.” And for Bangladesh, the irony is particularly bitter: a nation born in 1971 out of Pakistan’s brutality now seems determined to become East Pakistan again — just with better PR and an Interim Government that calls atrocities “fake news.” Extremism thrives in silence. Impunity breeds contagion. And when the world’s response is polite indifference, the victims — women, children, minorities — learn the oldest and most brutal lesson of history: they are on their own. If Geneva’s testimonies are to mean anything, they must be followed by decisive diplomatic, legal, and economic consequences. Not another polite statement. Not another hand-wringing resolution. Real pressure. Real action. The shadows of 1971 are lengthening. And this time, if Bangladesh slips fully into the old costume of East Pakistan, the world won’t be able to say it wasn’t warned.