CPB asks people to take up sticks against target killers

The Communist Party of Bangladesh President Mujahidul Islam Selim has urged the people to take up sticks and mount a resistance against the perpetrators of targeted murders that have plagued Bangladesh for sometime now.

Speaking at a protest gathering at Shahbagh, Selim on Friday reasoned that the call was necessitated owing to a perceptible failure of the government to curb the rising wave of deadly machete attacks in the country.

"If we all take up sticks in the 68,000 villages, only then can we defeat this unholy force," he said.

Training guns at Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, he said the minister who had once dismissed such acts as stray incidents is now forced to admit the existence of JMB and Ansarullah in the country.

Mocking his "home-grown terror" claim, Selim wondered if having terrorists raised on the home turf was not more dangerous than having terrorists from outside.

He attributed the lack of will to the Awami League's failure to stop the attacks despite being in power for seven straight years now.

His scathing attack on the government did not even spare Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina whom he dared to show "courage like the Bangabandhu and proclaim, 'I do not want the Prime Ministership, I want the independence of Bangladesh'".

Attacking the doctor who has allegedly come up with a botched autopsy report of murdered college student Sohagi Jahan Tonu at Comilla Cantonment, he asked what fear or pressure had forced him to do that.

"Is it because of his accepting money? Is it because of the fear of the uniform?" he asked.

If the fear of the uniform had forced him to do that, then the country was plummeting into an anarchy in which "we do not want to live", he declared.

Alluding to the lacing of an angle of extramarital affair into SP Babul Akhter's wife's murder investigation, he said it was very unfortunate that a man who spends his time hunting down terrorists for the country has to see this happen to his wife's murder probe.

He tore into the police inefficiency, asking what stopped them from curbing the violence.

The gathering at Shahbagh was organised under the banner of Anti Murder-Rape-Terrorism.

A charter of demands urging the government to identify and bring the perpetrators to book was also made.