| Submit your comments on this article |
| Bangladesh |
| Ban Jamaat as terror outfit |
| 2013-04-21 |
| [Bangla Daily Star] Eminent civil society members yesterday demanded that Jamaat-Shibir be banned as terrorist organizations for their orchestrated atrocities across the country, including violence on minorities. Bangladesh Rukhe Darao, a platform for civil society members, highlighted the need to reach out to ordinary citizens and make them part of the movement to establish a secular and democratic Bangladesh. The leaders of the platform articulated their five-point demand at a national convention in the capital's Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh. They also demanded that the government expedite the war crimes trial, resist communal violence and stand by its victims, take the country forward with the spirit of the Liberation War and allow free thinking, resist attempts to turn the country into a Taliban-style state and uphold women's rights. "We believe in the freedom of expression," said Dr Sarwar Ali, vice-president of Chhayanaut, while reading out a statement. "But Jamaat and Shibir have proved through their actions that they are terrorist organizations that manipulate religion and oppose the constitution. As such, they should immediately be banned under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2009." The platform will submit to the prime minister a memorandum with its demands, participate in progressive movements, including the Gonojagoron Mancha, and organise citizens' rallies in each district in future, Sarwar said. Dr Anisuzzaman, professor emeritus of Dhaka University, urged people to boycott and resist anti-Liberation War organizations that have grown in power since 1975. Rights activist Sultana Kamal said, "There is no force that can defeat the spirit of the war -- the spirit of human emancipation." Educationist Prof Serajul Islam Choudhury said, "Successive governments have failed to uphold secularism as a basic constitutional principle and do away with Islam as the state religion." Different governments and foreign backers have been funding madrasa education, he said. Similar support was given to bad boy group al-Qaeda to oust the then communist regime of Soviet Union, he added. Writer Muhammad Zafar Iqbal said he was shocked to see former Awami League politician Shamim Osman, Jatiya Party ...aka Jatiya Front; a political party established by Bangladictator Lieutenant General Hussain Muhammad Ershad in 1986 to lend a veneer of respectability to his rule. Since nobody was amused he was forced to resign by popular demand in 1990. The party remains in existence with about a dozen seats in Bangla's parliament... Chairman HM Ershad and prominent BNP leaders express their solidarity with Hefajat-e Islam activists. Meeting each of Hefajat's demands would push the country back by 100 years, he added. To win votes in the next general election, the government must not delay the trial of the war criminals, economist Prof MM Akash observed. Chhayanaut president Sanjida Khatun, cultural activists Kamal Lohani and Ramendu Majumdar, lawyer Shahdeen Malik, rights activist Rana Dasgupta and Gonojagoron Mancha spokesperson Imran H Sarker also spoke among others at the event. |
| Posted by:Fred |