Bangladesh has been exposed to serious multidimensional crisis due to high handedness of the unelected Awami League government in containing a rational movement of the country鈥檚 student community, main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said on Monday.
While talking with a couple of reporters at his Gulshan residence, Fakhrul said that in order to restore peace and stability, the government urgently needed to hold dialogue with all political parties and country鈥檚 senior citizens.
鈥楢ll the political parties, of course Awami League also聽 as they created the crisis, and country鈥檚 senior citizens should come together to find a solution. Solution should come through dialogue as the country is facing serious political, economic and governance crisis,鈥� he said.
About the ongoing student movement, he said that the government had completely failed to understand the students鈥� sentiment and insulted them initially.
He said that the government had created a narrative that third-party entered their movement and later directly started saying that BNP and other opposition parties were involved in the student movement to justify their attacks on students.
鈥楾hrough this narrative they [government] tried to establish that carrying out attack on BNP or other opposition political parties was justified. Look, police conducted a raid on BNP鈥檚 central office and said they recovered arms from there. It was nothing but a staged game to give a political label on student鈥檚 movement,鈥� Fakhrul said.
He also said that at one stage the government imposed censorship on media, mostly on electronic media, forcing all to air their narrative and suppressing the news of AL鈥檚 repression.
鈥榁arious establishments were vandalised at many areas after protestors left the area. Now television channels are airing the news of this vandalism and there are no news of the brutal killing of these several hundred of students and ordinary people,鈥� he said.
He also said that the government crossed the limits of all brutality in country鈥檚 history and broke all local and international norms to prevent unarmed protests.
鈥楤angladesh never witnessed such incidents of firing and dropping sound grenade and tear shells from helicopter on unarmed protesters. This time, law enforcers did this and they even dropped sound grenades and tear shells at residential areas in Dhaka,鈥� he said.
He said that though his party and its student wing Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal gave moral support to the student movement against quota system in government job, they did not engage themselves in the movement directly as students wanted to keep the movement non-partisan.
鈥楤ut the government has attempted to prevent the peaceful movement in a violent way just out of fear as they are always afraid of the people upsurge after claiming the power without people鈥檚 mandate,鈥� he said.
