THE Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, which is said to have brought out a procession last on the University of Dhaka campus in 2013 after a campus presence in 2008, has made the headlines again as the organisation鈥檚 university unit president sat at a meeting with the vice-chancellor, pro-vice-chancellor, treasurer and proctor on September 21 to discuss the academic environment of the university. But he had so far worn the cloak of a Chhatra League leader on the campus. Leaders of 11 student organisations attended the meeting. What is intriguing about the episode is that the university unit Chhatra Shibir president who attended the meeting was known as one of the organisers of the Students against Discrimination that spearheaded the student protests, which started seeking reforms in civil service job reservations in July. The protests, spanning most of July, finally flared up into a mass uprising that overthrew the 15 years of authoritarian regime of the Awami League. Later, it transpired that a joint general secretary of the Chhatra League unit of the Social Welfare and Research Institute, an institution of the University of Dhaka, was the secretary of the university unit Chhatra Shibir.
Subsequent media reports suggest that many leaders of the Islami Chhatra Shibir, which general students drove out of the University of Dhaka campus in the early 1990s, infiltrated the Chhatra League, the student wing of the toppled Awami League, and had furtively been present when the Chhatra League had carried out all the misdeeds that earned the organisation, which veered off its glorious past, the notoriety of being a rogue organisation. Such a situation may not be typical of the University of Dhaka campus, it may have also happened on other campuses. It only requires further digging. The Chhatra League made the headlines for extortion, rape, murder, the control of halls of residence in universities and hostels in colleges, supremacy in educational institutions, tender manipulation, etc, giving rise to repeated demands for trial and punishment of the organisation and its leaders and activists. In such a situation, the Islami Chhatra Shibir, as leaders of some student organisations say, and logically so, cannot brush aside its responsibility for the Chhatra League misdeeds on the campus as it implanted its activists in the organisation and supported its repressive activities. All this makes the Islami Chhatra Shibir 鈥榓 partner in crime鈥� with the Chhatra League and suggests a collusion of the Awami League and the Jamaat-e-Islami. Whilst the Chhatra League and its leaders and activists should be put to trial and punished for the misdeeds that they have committed on- and off-campus all these years, the Islami Chhatra Shibir and its leaders and activists should also be tried and punished for being part of and support for the Chhatra League misdeeds.
The involvement of Chhatra Shibir people in the Chhatra League politics should, therefore, be taken up seriously. And, both the Chhatra League and the Islami Chhatra Shbir should be tried and punished on the same counts.
