দেশচিন্তা

On January 8th, 2015, the prominent human rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement criticizing the Awami League government of Bangladesh for what it deemed as excessive use of force against the opposition as well as imposing censorship on the media. The release can be found here.

If you never heard of the Bangladesh Studies Network, this is a FaceBook group with their agenda illustrated in the following description.

According to the eminent British oncologist Willis, "A neoplasm is an abnormal mass of tissue, the growth of which exceeds and is uncoordinated with that of normal tissue and persists in the same excessive manner after cessation of the stimuli that evoked the change". Neoplasms may be of two types : 1)Benign 2)Malignant.

Today I convinced an initially pro-Shahbag but currently Shahbag indifferent friend to start writing for Shahbag. Like so many people in Bangladesh, she has been adversely affected by the political and religious propagandas and had decided to remain neutral about Shahbag despite having a strong desire to see the war-criminals punished.

28th February and 1st March

• Jamaat-Shibir fanatics wreaked havoc on the Hindu community across the country. They vandalized at least six temples, including one of Buddhists, and torched houses and business establishments of Hindu people in Noakhali, Gaibandha, Chittagong, Rangpur, Laxmipur, Thakurgaon, Sylhet, Chapainawabganj and elsewhere in the country.

I'd like to start this piece with a disclaimer - I have not been payed to criticize BNP (or been bribed with free biriyani to support Shahbag).

Since the establishment of International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) to prosecute the war criminals of Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Jamaat-e-Islami is desperately trying to foil the trial in order to save its top leaders, who are indicted for war crimes.

There is this recent tendency to proclaim that Jamaat-e-Islam’s student wing Islami Chattra Shibir is no worse than BNP’s student wing Jatiyatabadi Chattra Dol and the ruling party Awami League’s student wing Bangladesh Chattra League. While superficially rational, this comparison is actually based on a profound confusion and negligence of the facts.

Shahbag movement believes in people’s power, believes in democracy, believes in peaceful protest, which we have successfully demonstrated since last month. We will continue this protest until every single war criminal is brought under justice.

Blogger Ahmed Rajib Hyder(Shovon), writing under the pseudonym “Thaba baba”, was known for his strong anti-religion rhetoric and his equally vocal opposition to the “Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islam” party, which aided and actively participated in the genocide of Bengali population alongside the Pakistani army in the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971.