Chittagong, Mar 24 (bdnews24.com) — Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has said that 30 army officers of the 57 killed during the BDR mutiny last year had been picked for special duty or belonged to families of ruling Awami League leaders.
The mutiny at BDR's Pilkhana headquarters in Dhaka spread across the country, she told AL leaders of Chittagong on Wednesday. "But we dealt with it quickly."
The Pilkhana mutineers, during the bloody events of February 25-26 last year, killed over 70 people, 57 of them army officers deputed to the border force. The rebellion also spread to other BDR outposts across the country.
The government has formed six special courts, including two in Dhaka, which are trying some 3,500 border guards accused in some 40 cases around the country.
The prime minister said on Wednesday that officers who were picked out for important responsibilities including the Special Security Force, which is entrusted with the prime minister's security, were killed.
"Many of the officers killed were relatives of Awami League MPs or leaders," she said.
Hasina was addressing a gathering of party leaders and supporters at the Chittagong Circuit House as part of the Awami League's countrywide 'mass communication' campaign. The month-long campaign is aimed at strengthening grassroots support, hearing what the people have to say, and rallying public opinion against the opposition BNP's "negative politics", party leaders have said.
The Chittagong Circuit House is where BNP founder and former president Gen Ziaur Rahman was murdered by military officers in 1982.
Hasina on Wednesday accused Rahman for rewarding the murderers of her own father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, with high profile appointments at Bangladesh embassies. She also accused former president HM Ershad and former prime minister Khaleda Zia of giving her father's killers a political legitimacy.
Hasina said Ershad, Jatiya Party chairperson and now a coalition partner of Hasina's Awami League-led government, had made one of the killers a presidential candidate.
She said BNP chairperson Khaleda, now leader of the opposition, made another "killer" a member of parliament from her party.
The prime minister told AL leaders that the previous BNP-led government was "too busy in looting and plundering" and did not initiate any measures for ensuring power generation or increasing gas production in Bangladesh.
"The people of the country would not have to go through such misery if they (the BNP government) had done their job better."
She also accused the previous 2001-2006 BNP administration for "spreading fundamentalism and militancy across the country's educational institutions".
Speaking of recent unrest in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Hasina said there were "national and international conspiracies" on to destabilise the region.
"The last government only increased the tension instead of implementing the (1997 CHT) peace accord."
After the public meeting, Hasina sat in a closed door meeting with senior leaders of the party in Chittagong.
She also met with government officials at the circuit house before the meeting and urged them to work sincerely towards realising the AL government's vision for development and a 'Digital Bangladesh'.
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