Hifazat to go ahead with Dhaka-siege

Hifazat-e Islam on Saturday decided to go ahead with their pre-scheduled besiege Dhaka programme on Sunday terming the Prime Minister’s claim of addressing most of its 13- point demands as ‘devoid of merit’.

An announcement to this regard was made by the radical organisation’s chief Ahmed Shafi. Its Joint Secretary General Mufti Faizullah read out a written statement of Shafi at a press conference at its Dhaka office.

On Friday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had urged the Chittagong-based group to call off its programme saying the government had met most of its 13-point charter of demands.

“The Prime Minister’s statement is devoid of any merit. She has tried to sidestep the demands,” said Shafi, whose organisation is widely believed to be backed by the Jamaat-e-Islami.

He claimed Hasina’s statement did not contain clear directions for implementation of the demands.

Its Secretary General Junaid Babunogri, however, ‘thanked’ Hasina for ‘fully agreeing’ with its demand to prohibit all jokes about beards, caps and Islamic culture in the visual media along with negative characterisation of actors in religious attire.

The anti-Ganajagaran Mancha group claimed its 13-point charter of demands were the ‘public demands’.

The organisation’s publication secretary Munir Ahmed had already disclosed the activists of the group would take positions at six points around the capital – from Jatrabarhi to Kanchpur Bridge, from Jatrabarhi to Demra Bridge, Postgola Buriganga Bridge, Babubazar Bridge in Old Dhaka, Tongi Bridge in Abdullahpur, and Baliarpur in Aminbazar—to lay a siege to Dhaka on Sunday.

During its April 6 rally in Dhaka, several journalists, including a female scribe, were attacked near the programme venue. They had also hurled water bottles at DMP Commissioner Benazir Ahmed on the day.