Imran Sarker says he has been blocked from boarding plane to US

Ganajagaran Mancha Spokesperson Imran H Sarker has alleged he has been barred from boarding a plane to the United States to attend events of the State Department and Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

He went to Shahjalal International Airport and was waiting to board an Emirates Airlines plane after getting the boarding pass and immigration clearance. But the immigration police stopped him around 5pm on Friday, Imran said. 

An immigration official called Imran and said they had some more formalities to complete, according to the activist.    

“They kept me waiting and assured me that the plane will not fly without their permission. But 10 minutes before the plane was scheduled to leave at 7:30pm, they said I cannot leave because of orders from the high-ups,” Imran told bdnews24.com.

The official did not provide an acceptable answer about the move, the Ganajagaran Mancha spokesperson said.  

The official said Imran would not have been cleared by the immigration had there been a travel ban on him.

“I can’t say anything else. I have orders from the high-ups,” the activist quoted the official as telling him.

He was also asked to sign a paper declaring that he could not leave owing to family matters or arriving late to board the plane, Imran said and added he did not sign it.

The officer-in-charge of immigration police at the airport did not take calls from bdnews24.com for comments.

The State Department invited him to its International Visitor Leadership Program, according to Imran. 

He said he was also scheduled to speak along with two representatives of as many other countries at an event of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

The Ganajagaran Mancha spokesperson described the incident as ‘unprecedented autocratic behaviour of the government’.

“I want to know why the government is so afraid. Bangabandhu also visited America under the same programme in 1957, but the then Pakistan government did not bar him,” he wrote in a Facebook post.     

“Is our situation worse now than it was during the Pakistan period?” he asked.

Imran, a former leader of the ruling Awami League’s student affiliate Bangladesh Chhatra League, became a household name after the Ganajagaran Mancha movement started at Shahbagh square in February 2013 to demand capital punishment for war criminals.

The Awami League and its affiliates backed the movement in the beginning but later started staying away from it when the Shahbagh-based activists began to speak out on other issues like rapes and extra-judicial killings. 

Imran had been charged with slandering Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during protests. The High Court dismissed the case, according to him.  

He was detained by the Rapid Action Battalion for hours from a protest programme against extra-legal killings at Shahbagh on June 6.