BNP hints govt hand in Shahbagh protest

Senior BNP leader Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain Saturday said the ongoing movement demanding capital punishment for the war criminals and ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami at the capital’s Shahbagh is a ‘partisan’ one.

“The movement at Shahbagh’s Prajanmo Chattar is not a neutral movement... The government created this movement to draw a veil over corruption, misrule and the demand for a non-partisan government,” he said at a discussion held at the National Press Club.

The BNP Standing Committee member also criticised slogans chanted at Shahbagh against some pro-Jamaat media outlets.

“A propaganda s is being run from the demonstration platform at Shahbagh against some newspapers and media outlets. The demands and slogans of the protesters prove that this is nothing but a partisan movement,” he said.

Hours after the International Crimes Tribunal-2 on Feb 5 awarded life imprisonment to Jamaat Assistant Secretary General and war criminal Abdul Quader Molla, the uprising at one of the key intersections of the capital began rejecting the verdict for being ‘too light’.

On the 11th day of the movement, Feb 15 night, an architect and an active member of the Shahbagh movement Ahmed Rajib Haider was found hacked to death near his residence in Pallabi of the capital. The blogger had been relentlessly attacking the religion-driven politics of Jamaat and its student affiliate Islami Chhatra Shibir.

After his death, some newspapers ran reports terming him an ‘atheist’ and ‘apostate’, and alleged that Rajib used to ‘write against Islam’. The BNP-leaning Bengali daily Amar Desh’s lead news headline Friday, roughly translated into English, read, “Bloggers committing contempt of religion and court”.

The daily earlier ran ‘instigating reports’ on the Shahbagh protests, which the demonstrators have termed ‘fabricated’.

However, activists of several Islamist parties unleashed a wave of mayhem across the country Friday and called for a nationwide dawn-to-dusk shutdown for Sunday protesting what they said “attacks on demonstrators demanding punishment to the ‘atheist’ bloggers of the Shahbagh movement”. Police suspect the Jamaat-e-Islami backed the all-out attacks across the country.

Main opposition BNP Saturday also extended its support to the Sunday’s shutdown called by the 12 Islamist and like-minded parties.

Speaking on the issue, Mosharraf Saturday said, “The government’s police force Friday attacked Muslims who were protesting contempt of Islam and derogatory remarks about Prophet Mohammad (SM).”

Criticising the Shahbagh movement, he said, “At first, it was said that the movement was led by the bloggers. They are not from any party. But this has become clear now that the movement has gone under a partisan platform. Imran H Sarker, one of the initiators of the movement, was a leader of pro-Awami League Swadhinata Chikitshak Parishad. He was once a leader of the Bangladesh Chhatra League. And now, in front of cameras, this person is claiming to be neutral.”

He warned the government, “We want to make it clear, they [government] can hatch as many as plots they want to, but the demand for a nonpartisan government cannot be swept under the rug through the Shahbagh movement. If the government does not meet this demand, they will be ousted through mass uprising.”

The BNP leader was speaking at the discussion organised by the Sammilito Peshajibi Parishad in celebration of the International Mother Language Day at the National Press Club.

Mosharraf alleged that the government was pushing the country towards anarchy and conflict in a planned way. “They planted the seeds of anarchy by annulling the constitutional provision of non-party [caretaker] government.”

“On the one hand, they inserted secularism and non-communalism in the Constitution, on the other, they retained Islam as the state religion. This is how they are dividing the whole nation,” he added.