Release bloggers: Ex-student leaders

Former student leaders have condemned the recent arrest of bloggers and closures of blogs in the wake of demands by Jamaat-e-Islami, its student font Chattra Shibir and their ‘collaborators’.

A statement signed by student leaders, who were vocal in the 1980s and other pro-democracy movements, issued on Wednesday said the government was infringing on people’s ‘freedom of expression’ and acting against secularism and the activists of Ganajagaran Mancha under pressure from the anti-liberation forces.

They called upon the Awami League-led government to immediately move away from such a ‘suicidal’ decision and demanded exemplary punishment for Daily Amar Desh and others involved in instigating recent communal hatred.

They asked for release of the detained bloggers and renewed the call for an immediate ban on Jamaat as it had opposed Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War. It also advocated stern actions against the ‘collaborators’.

Those signed the statement include Anwarul Haq, Mushtaq Hossain, Saiful Haq, Mizanur Rahman Manu, Asadullah Tareq, Shafi Ahmed, Shahidul Islam, Hasan Tariq Chowdhury and Ashraful Haq Mukul.

Police on Monday detained and remanded three bloggers on charges of hurting people’s religious sentiments following the demand of radical group Hifazat-e-Islami.

Asif Mohiuddin, another blogger and online activist, was also detained on Tuesday.

Hifazat-e-Islam has demanded detention of ‘atheist bloggers' and threatened to undertake a march from Chittagong to Dhaka to push for it.