Ganajagaran Mancha offers talks with Hefajat

The Ganajagaran Mancha demonstrators have offered to sit with Hefajat-e-Islam which had called a general strike in Chittagong to thwart a rally of the Mancha there on Wednesday.

The proposal came in a statement on Tuesday night from main stage of the movement at Shahbagh intersection, now christened Prajanma Chattar.

The statement confirmed that the Chittagong rally was postponed until further notice, but a team of representatives of the Mancha would go to Chittagong on Wednesday.

The Mancha was supposed to hold its first rally outside Dhaka in front of the Chittagong Press Club. But police had clamped Section 144 in several areas after Jamaat-e-Islami backed organisation Hefajat threatened to spoil the rally and announced a general strike for the same day.

After police on Tuesday evening said they would not allow public gathering in the city on Wednesday, the Ganajagaran Mancha’s Chittagong chapter announced the postponement.

The statement, released from Shahbagh afterwards, said the Chittagong chapter of the Mancha pushed back the programme to avert confrontation.

“The team of Prajanma Chattar’s Ganajagaran Mancha representatives will go to Chittagong tomorrow and will hold discussions with a cross-section of people, Alems-Ulamas and Islamic philosophers to clear their confusions created by Jamaat and Shibir about the Ganajagaran Mancha.”

“Also, we are asking them to withdraw the general strike and sit with the team of Ganajagaran Mancha.”

After Chittagong Ganajagaran Mancha postponed their scheduled rally, Hefajat-e-Islam also withdrew their strike in Chittagong.

Earlier, Hefajat’s Chittagong metropolitan unit General Secretary Moinuddin Ruhi, at a rally Tuesday afternoon, had called the party activists to take to the streets to prevent the Ganajagaraqn Mancha rally at any cost.

The Ganajagaran Mancha statement read, “Jamaat and Shibir are taking advantage of their [Hefajat] position and carrying out violent attacks to create confusion among the people who believe in Islamic values.”

The protesters asked, “Aren’t you assisting the war criminals by going against the Ganajagaran Mancha?”

They cleared their position regarding the religious sentiment. “We respect the sentiment of the religious people. There is no scope to create confusion by tying the religious faith of the people with the non-violent movement of the people from all walks of life.”

“But, those against the mass protest are plotting to push us towards violence. The Jamaat-Shibir force attacked, vandalised and torched the Ganajagaran Mancha across the country and detonated crude bombs at the Nari Jagaran rally on Mar 8 in Dhaka.”

Several handmade bombs also exploded at around 8:15pm Tuesday in front of the Chittagong Press Club, where the Wednesday rally was supposed to take place.

The Ganajagaran Mancha of Shahbagh in the statement also condemned the bomb explosions.

The protesters urged the government to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Hundreds of people, mostly youths, first took to the streets in Dhaka’s Shahbagh on Feb 5 after the second war crimes tribunal of Bangladesh sentenced Jamaat-e-Islami Assistant Secretary General Abdul Quader Molla to life in prison for crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War. The protesters felt the sentence was ‘too light’ for Molla.

The six-point charter demands of the demonstrators include death penalty to all war criminals and a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami.

The movement spread like wildfire across the country as more and more replica of Ganajagaran Mancha was set up in different districts including the one in Chittagong. The demonstrators there have been carrying out their programmes in front the Chittagong Press Club since Feb 6.

The protesters from Shahbagh had called the Wednesday rally as a part of their effort to spread and strengthen the movement. They were also supposed to attend the rally.

But Hefajat-e-Islam announced the shutdown in the port city in order to resist the ‘atheist bloggers who show disrespect to Islam’.