AL sees ‘ulterior motive’ in statue debate, BNP alleges ‘government plot’

The “dispute and debate” over statue has been created “deliberately”, the Awami League has said, while the BNP has alleged that the government is “out to destabilise the country”.

“Surely there has been a political motive,” said Obaidul Quader, general secretary of the ruling party, on Sunday after a statue of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was defaced in Kushtia.

Speaking at an extended meeting of the party’s Narsingdi unit via video call, he asked why the Islamists in Bangladesh raised questions about statues suddenly when other Muslim countries have sculpture as well.  

“We must remain united against the political motive of the communal forces,” he said.

He had called for calm over the statue issue earlier, but the Awami League’s student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League has threatened to beat up those behind the vandalism of Bangabandhu’s statue.

“We will not compromise after the audacity they have shown…Beat them up whenever you see them,” said the organisation’s President Al-Nahean Khan Joy at a protest programme on the Dhaka University campus.

A group of youths vandalised the BNP’s office in Kushtia on Saturday amid protests against the vandalism of the statue. The business organisation of a local leader of the party was torched as well.

Referring to the incidents, the party’s Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said at a discussion in Dhaka on Sunday that these were “parts of a government conspiracy to destabilise the country”.     

“This government has destroyed Bangladesh. Now they are conspiring again,” he said.

“They want to throw the country into chaos again. They want to repress the soldiers of democracy by scapegoating them,” he added.