Islamo-fascists run amuck in Dhaka
The Islamist party men torched police motorbikes, vandalised three news vans and dozens of public and private vehicles and beat up the common people indiscriminately. These were only a few snap shots of the guerilla-style attack from a procession of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, a pro-Jamaat-e-Islami student wing, at Farmgate and Karwan Bazar. It was not the first time that the Jamaat-Shibir men went on the rampage and wounded police personnel. They have done so almost every day since November 5 in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country.
On November 4, the Jamaat announced a nine-day agitation programme beginning from November 5 to press home its demand for the immediate release of the party's top leaders, including those facing war crimes trial. Till Monday, more than 200 policemen, at least 300 people and three journalists were injured during clashes between the police and Jamaat-Shibir men across the country. They ended their protest programme yesterday through a targeted attack on the law enforcers in an unprecedented manner, leaving about 20 policemen injured in Dhaka, Khulna and Cox's Bazar.
Noticeably, the police role during these attacks throughout the week seemed very unusual. They either tried to escape those attacks or were just silent observers, witnesses said. Only a few policemen went on a counter attack, mainly in self-defence, they added. Never in the past had police played such a passive role during a political violence. It was about 4:15 pm. Hundreds of vehicles were stranded on both sides of Farmgate-Karwan Bazar road in a heavy traffic. All of a sudden, around 50 Shibir men started vandalising vehicles -- BRTC double-deckers, private cars, motorbikes, human haulers. They also vandalised three news vans of ATN News and set fire to two police motorbikes at Karwan Bazar, police said.
The Jamaat-Shibir men indiscriminately beat up pedestrians, injuring at least 30 people, including 15 policemen, witnesses said, adding that at least 30 vehicles were damaged by the attackers... Read more:
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The recent threat of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to Jamaat-e-Islami that her government might invoke the Shariah and apply its provision of ‘qisas’ against Jamaat activists has caused a stir in different sections of society. The democratically-oriented section of h people, who aspire to see a clear separation between earthly politics and divine religion, have, indeed, reasons to be worried about the prime minister’s statement. While many believe that the statement, made at her party’s central working committee meeting on Friday, was nothing but a rhetorical utterance by the prime minister and, therefore, there is no reason on part of the Awami League, which still talks about secularism, to impose any religious law on the people who had once fought for a secular, democratic state in Bangladesh. Many others, however, cannot rest assured because the same Awami League has endorsed the Islamic character of the state, imposed gradually on it by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jatiya Party, through the adoption of the 15th amendment to the constitution. Besides, the prime minister’s statement has reminded many of the forgotten fact that the Awami League in a pre-election arrangement in late 2007 had entered a written agreement with Khelafat Andolan for introducing Islamic laws in Bangladesh.
