The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party said on Tuesday that the ruling Awami League had turned Bangladesh into a ‘violence state’ by using state machinery to cling to power.
‘AL uses state machinery, including the law enforcement forces, the judiciary, and the administration. That means they have already turned Bangladesh into a violent state,’ BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said at a human chain programme in Dhaka.
BNP’s Keraniganj south unit arranged the programme in front of its Naya Paltan central office to protest the attack on party standing committee member Gayeshwar Chandra Roy during its sit-in programme at Dholaikhal on Saturday.
Fakhrul said that the Awami League was a terrorist party by birth as it beat its founder and a national leader like Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani and drove him out of the
party.
He said that AL themselves are terrorists, and that is why they turned the country into an absolute terrorist state.
He said that the Awami League is the party that sustains itself by resorting to terrorism, and there is nothing but terror in their body language.
About arranging lunch for Gayeshwar at the office of the Detective Branch of the police and sending fruits for party leader Amanullah Aman by the prime minister after their detention, Fakhrul said the government did it to divert people’s attention from the movement for democracy, voting rights, and human rights.
He said that the Awami League had become so bankrupt politically that they had to do these things now and spread videos.
‘Does the Awami League know etiquette? They don’t know it. The Awami League was never a gentleman’s party. So, there is no reason to expect politeness from them,’ Fakhrul added.
He said that Gayeshwar and Aman did not need to prove their patriotism afresh, as they proved their patriotism with their lifelong politics and struggle for democracy.
The BNP leader said that the government got scared seeing the gathering of lakhs of people at the BNP’s grand rally at Naya Paltan on July 28.
He said that it was the Awami League, not the BNP, that indulged in arson violence.
‘BNP will establish democracy through a justified and peaceful movement,’ he said.
Fakhrul asked the government to step down and dissolve parliament to hold the election under a non-party caretaker government.
He said that this was the only way to overcome the crisis.
BNP joint secretary general Syed Moazzem Hossain, assistant secretary for marginal and manpower development affairs Arpana Roy, Dhaka district president Khandkar Abu Ashfaq, and former president of Dhaka district unit Dewan Salahuddin, among others, spoke at the human chain.
