Mostafa Kamal MajumderThe trading of accusations by the government and the opposition centring on the abrupt flushing out of the sit-in of the unarmed Hefazat-e-Islam workers from the Motijheel Shapla Chattar surroundings in the early hours of May 6 gives rise to the crucial question as to whether the liberal space that the people are still experiencing will persist.Hefazat-e-Islam has claimed the death of 3000 of their workers in the combined operation of Rapid Action Battalion, Police and the Border Guards Bangladesh. The Police Commissioner of Dhaka Benazir Ahmed has confirmed the death of 11 persons including a policeman.
Leaders of the non-party Islamist outfit had earlier announced that their support will be for those parties which will accept their 13-point demand that includes restoration of ‘absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah’ in the Constitution and capital punishment of blasphemous bloggers.
Government ministers and allies of the ruling alliance have blamed the Hefazat-e-Islam for creating a reign of terror in the city that evening. The complaints against them include the burning of the holy Qur’an and other religious books. While the opposition is mourning the dead, the administration has started cases against Hefazat leaders and has already arrested over 50 of them.
MK Anwar, members of BNP’s standing committee, faces warrant of arrest for alleging that a leader of AL’s assoiciate Swechhasebak league had led the burning of the Qur’an and other books at the southern gate of the Baitul Muqarram National Mosque. Again government leaders have threatened to implicate senior BNP leaders in cases for allegedly ordering Hefazat workers to set fire to the holy books.
Hefazat-e-Islam had organised a rally at the city centre also a month before, on April 6, to press their demands and called the May 5 Dhaka siege programme from that rally. The siege organised at six major points of entrance to the city that day (May 5) was reportedly participated by over a million supporters but was peaceful. There was trouble at the tail of the meeting at the Paltan square from 11-30 am till the evening with law enforcers firing thousands of shots of rubber bullets and exploding sound grenades. Some civilian elements were photographed firing at Hefazat workers from pistols and revolvers.
Witness accounts and TV footages indicate that sticks and brickbats were the main weapons of the Hefazat men who tore away some plants from street medians for use as weapons. They also set fire to tyres. Some offices and shops in the Paltan area were vandalised during the little over six-hour series of clashes.
But campaigns have been made to characterise Hefazat supporters as terrorists backed by the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami. Fact remains that the new Islamist outfit did not take up the programme of movement before some blasphemous postings made by bloggers came to their knowledge, and threats to end Islami politics and Islamic parties were uttered by some others.
After branding Jamaat as a terrorist outfit, some people in the corridors of power at the beginning wanted to tell the people that Hezafat-e-Islam as an offshoot of Jamaat which again is according to them protected by the BNP. Most Jamaat leaders and workers are now behind bars, similar is the case with many BNP leaders and workers. If the allegation of the BNP harbouring terrorists continues and if they continue to be refused the freedom of holding rallies and processions what democratic alternative they will be left with to pursue and propagate their ideas and values.
The people have already noticed that some political leaders have preferred to abscond instead of surrendering to courts in response to warrants of arrest. The number of such helplessly defiant political workers should not be allowed to swell. If opposition leaders and workers cannot live in peace and cannot exercise their democratic rights of dissent with dignity, how on earth a liberal space can be maintained artificially. Our only expectation is that undesirable resistance from parties believing in constitutional politics should not be provoked.
(First published in The New Nation, Dhaka on 11 May 2013)
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