Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday urged all, including the country’s conscious citizens, to come up to protect the country and its people from militants.
“We don’t want destruction, but development, we don’t want militant acts, but peace…we want Bangladesh to become a peaceful nation in the world and continue to move ahead as a peaceful country in South Asia and that’s our goal,” she said.Hasina further said, “But, it’s never acceptable that Bangladesh is affected or its image is tarnished or the country is maligned due to a handful of people or a vested quarter or for a party. I seek support from all to free the country and the nation from such militant acts.”
The Prime Minister was addressing a function after distributing the Independence Awards 2015 among seven eminent personalities at Osmani Memorial Auditorium in the capital. Cabinet Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan conducted the function organised by the Cabinet Division.
She asked why the BNP-Jamaat was burning people to death through hurling petrol bombs making the air heavy with the bad smell of the burnt people pushing the families of the burn victims into untold sufferings.
“Why such a situation should be created? Why should people pay for one’s wrong politics, they shouldn’t pay rather the leadership and the party concerned will have to pay then price for that. But, here we’ve seen ill-efforts are there to deter our advancement through unleashing militant acts and killing people…this is unfortunate,” she added.
In this connection, Hasina said her government has been patiently handing along with the common people the anarchic situation unleashed by the BNP-Jamaat over the last two and a half months as people do not support militant acts.
“We’ll be able to overcome the situation gradually, but we don’t want our people to be are burned to death leaving their families into immense miseries,” she said adding that such oppression and torture are not at all acceptable.
Accusing the anti-liberation forces of destroying the spirit of the Liberation War and distorting the history of sacrifices of heroic sons of the soil after the assassination of Bangabandhu in 1975, Sheikh Hasina said that military dictator Ziaur Rahman made war criminals ministers and advisers and rewarded them in many ways.
The Prime Minister regretted that once the Independence Award used to be given to such persons who did not want the country’s independence and worked against the liberation of the country as cohorts of the Pakistani occupation forces.
Notably elderly politician Prof. Muzaffar Ahmed did not take the Independence Award though he was chosen an awardee. – UNB
