‘Release bloggers within 24hrs’

Teachers and students of Dhaka University on Wednesday pressed for the release of the three arrested bloggers within 24 hours.

"Or else we will intensify our agitation," DU Bangla department Professor Rafique Ullah Khan said at a rally on the campus.

“Two months back, the younger generation set up the Ganajagaran Mancha to demand capital punishment for war criminals. They revived the spirit of the Liberation War and a non-communal Bangladesh. Their only crime was to have wanted to build a country free of war criminals and Jamaat.”

One of the arrested bloggers is a Dhaka University student. The arrests were made following demands to punish ‘atheists’ from Islamists operating under the banner of Hifazat-e-Islam.

Other teachers demanding the release of arrested bloggers include Robayet Ferdous and Fahmidul Haque of Department of Mass Media and Journalism, Mashiur Rahman of Department of Sociology, Shafiquzzaman of Economics, and Meher Nigar of Bangla.

Robayet Ferdous said the government had 'chained creativity and freedom of thinking' of the youth. “Answers could have been given in blogs if anyone was upset with writings, instead of answering by chains.”

Bangladesh had bowed down to fundamentalism, he said.