Late night news from Dhaka

Islamic Fundamentalists Strike again

 Ajoy Roy 

Published on May 03, 2009

Following series of bomb attacks at several places in the 64 districts on 17 August, 2005, the bomb explosions here and there are continuing unabated with quite severity in a systematic but apparently scattered manner through out Bangladesh. The Members of the JMB and Bangla Bhai’s Jagrata Muslim Janata are conducting these terrorist activities with the collaboration Jamat I Islami and other Islamic parties belonging to 4-party alliance. They have made no secret that their immediate targets lower court judges. By creating terrorism they want to collapse the secular judicial system now prevailing in the country. Their next targets are, not necessarily, in order of preference- the secular liberal lawyers, Supreme Court judges and lawyers, schools and educational institutes including university, and local administration, DC, SP, UNO etc. By their activities they want to collapse the entire judicial and administrative system. Gradually they are widening their network.

 

Their last severe operation was killing of two lower court judges on 14th November in Jhalakathi. In the operation two judges namely Mr. Jagannath Panre, senior assistant judge and Mr. Shahid Shohel Ahmad Choudhury, senior assistant judge were killed. Expressing the indignation, by civil and political community criticized the government’s utter failure to combat terrorism effectively. Obviously our entire mechanism to deal with Islamic fundamentalists failed. From this point of view govern lost its moral right to govern. They should resign handing over the power to the president, who should immediately form caretaker interim government to run the country and call for general election. Even justice Mostafa Kamal, a conservative and Islamist found these acts intolerable. According him these terrorist are fanatic religionist- who must be dealt with severity. According to him these uneducated fanatics are destroying whatever good we gained. The JMB has already issued serious threatening letters to Advocate Mahbub Alam, president of Supreme Court Lawyers’ Association in which terming Supreme Court judges as ‘ghushkhor’ they warned that the judges could not be protected with gunmen. They will be sent to hell.

 

Today in two separate incidents one at Gazipur where at around 11 a.m. a large number of bombs wrapped around a suicidal person entered the Bar library in the disguise of an advocate. Immediately the explosive devises exploded violently. The incidents killed two men one an advocate another an assistant to a lawyer. At least 50 were wounded of whom 18 very serious cases were taken to DMCH. Another advocate died there an unidentified woman also succumbed to her injury. Many lost their legs and hands. The TV channels did not show the intolerable ugly scenes of the injured people. The people of Gazipur spontaneously together with the lawyers brought out protest rallies.

 

At Chittagong on the way to eajlas staircase again a suicidal bombs exploded which immediately killed two polices and several were injured numbering 18 out of whom several were in critical condition. A leaflet was discovered in the court premise near the place of occurrence which reads- Setting aside the Allah’s laws those judges conduct trial under made must be eliminated.

 

None so far arrested. In his immediate reaction DR. Kamal Hosain ‘This a strike against people, strike against the state itself. If these activities are allowed to continue, no one in Bangladesh is secure. The Supreme Court lawyers association called a dawn to dusk strike on Thursday, 1st December. After the incident at Gazipur, the lawyers immediately left the court and there could not be session of any courts. The Dhaka court lawyers also boycotted the sessions.

 

As a government spokesman Mr. Mannan Bhuiyan, LGDR minister, remarked ‘Those who did it are enemies of the country and enemies of the humanity.’ The PM at Patuakhali said in a public meeting:

 

  • Terrorism has been totally eliminated
  • The communal harmony has been established throughout the Country.

 

Glaring examples on the part of PM how she could suppress the truth. It is strange isn’t it?  

                                  


Prof. Ajoy K. Roy, is a reputed scientist and human rights activist from Bangladesh