[Bangla Daily Star] No fewer than 200 coppers were maimed across the country in the last nine days of violent demonstrations by Jamaat-Shibir men. Interestingly, the law enforcers were apparently the target of "planned attacks" that also left at least 300 people injured.A former police chief thinks the attacks on the law enforcers might have been carried out to demoralise them and disrupt law and order. Two eminent citizens, however, consider the attacks as a manifestation of fear in the Jamaat-e-Islami
...
The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka
The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an
independentbranch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
and its associated body Islami Chhatra Shibir
... the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh...
, and their desperate bid to foil the ongoing war crimes trial.
"The reason behind targeting coppers [in the attacks] might have been to undermine their spirit," former inspector general of police ASM Shahjahan told The Daily Star.
He said the attacks were probably carried out to obstruct law and order and to push the war crimes trial off course.
"But whatever the reason might be, it is a must for the government to take necessary action against those who are involved," he added.
War crimes researcher Shahriar Kabir considers the attacks as Jamaat's desperation, saying that the party needs a few dead bodies so that it can claim "there is no democracy in the country".
"This is why they are attacking police to force them to retaliate [on Jamaat-Shibir] with fire and injure at least one," he said, adding, "It's their old strategy."
He also labelled the attacks as "pre-planned" whereas the government considers them as stray incidents.
Shahriar, executive president of Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, said the countrywide brutal activities of the Jamaat "prove its efforts to push the country towards a civil war".
The more the war crimes trial is approaching its final stages, the more the Jamaat is becoming desperate to foil it, he observed, and added that once the trial was completed properly and the accused punished, it would not be able to continue politics. "It is their life and death problem."
The government has no alternative but to ban the Jamaat as "it does not accept Bangladesh's constitution and its existence," he said.