Tarique will stop spreading 'false propaganda' if AL stops

The Awami League will have to stop its own lies if it wanted to stop others from doing the same, Tarique Rahman has said.

“I believe, Awami League should be the first to stop lying. Because they are the ones who started it,” the BNP chief’s son said in a statement.

“All we did was present some historic facts against a barrage of lies.”

BNP’s Senior Vice Chairman, in the UK since an army-backed caretaker government grabbed power, has been making a series of incendiary remarks against the nation’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

He is accused of widespread corruption during the time when his mother Khaleda Zia was prime minister from 2001-06.

His latest attack came during a ceremony to mark Victory Day in London, when he called Sheikh Mujib a ‘Razakar’.

He accused Mujib of keeping clandestine ties with the Pakistanis during the war.

The comments led to multiple suits of libel and sedition as well another war of words between Khaleda Zia and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangabandhu’s daughter.

Tarique said he was simply discussing Sheikh Mujib’s role, before and after the Liberation War, based on what he read in various books, documents and newspaper articles. He claimed to have provided evidence in support of his views.

“But the Awami League said it was ‘ill propaganda’ and urged that it be stopped.”

He said it was unfortunate that the leaders of the ruling party were attacking him ceaselessly without caring to disprove ‘his facts’ with real evidence.

The Awami League, not BNP, tried to alter Bangladesh’s history every time it came to power, he alleged.

“They spread lies about my father Ziaur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first president who proclaimed the country’s independence, every time they are in power… they use the judiciary to force their version of history on the people.”

As for the tussle over the street sign to honour Ziaur Rahman in Chicago’s Rogers Park, he said the government was wrongfully using its embassy in the US to make sure his father was stripped of the recognition.

Prime Minister Hasina had a habit of making inappropriate remarks against him and his mother, he said.

“My brother and I were little when our father was fighting the Pakistanis on the war front. We were with our mother, facing an uncertain future. But Sheikh Hasina and her leaders have been making unpleasant comments about this.”

Hasina recently shot back at Tarique by calling him an ‘illiterate animal’ while she asked his mother to keep her ‘rotten son’ at bay.

Khaleda fired back at the Awami League chief, saying she should watch what she says about her son.

“Will she (Hasina) like it if I attacked her son using words like ‘animal’ or ‘vulture’?”

“I propose that the government stop spreading false propaganda and allow history to take its own course."