Bangladeshis will remain in Bangladesh to fight no matter how easy imprisonment is

– Mainul Hosein :
Arrests by police, remand for police custody thereafter and sending people for imprisonment is too easy for denying any protection of law! However difficult it is to earn livelihood in this horrible time of economic stringency, police only think of obeying the order of the superiors. They do not care that money comes from the people. It is also not important for them to think that before found guilty, it is not justice to make one suffer imprisonment. According to one claim, some four lakhs political dissidents are now in jail without trial.
The concept is the mere imprisonment is not punishment. It is only the process of justice. The thinking is imprisonment after conviction is punishment. There is no hurry for trial because the purpose of keeping a person in jail is longer the better for hiding the truth.
As if we have a ministry of truth for lying in the Orwellian sense! The 50th anniversary of the democratic Constitution of 1972 was observed on November 4 by the Awami League government, when the truth is, after creation of one party rule under BAKSAL, the Constitution was abandoned as a piece of waste paper.
The problem is we have no political leadership with any understanding of democracy or importance of the people’s Constitution.
Nobody in the government cares to understand that a government without election is not constitutional. The government is fool or not, the nation is being treated as a fool. That is a great shame for the educated people.
The angry and economically devastated people have started to gather for demanding immediate change of government. We are not sure if the BNP understands that the people of all shades are coming in huge numbers to their rallies is not for any party’s interest of election. The people know that no election exists and so they are not anxious to wait another year for election.
BNP is the only big party whose workers and leaders are suffering in jail in a large number so the people see hope when BNP leaders are found in the fields raising voice of protests however confusedly. The people irrespective of political parties gathered in public meetings demanding change of government now. The present demand should not be for caretaker government at the election time.
The people want change now for a competent and honest government for urgently ameliorating their miseries. The present government is the government of corrupt millionaires. It is not dependent on the people’s vote either.
The BNP leadership may not understand that the people are joining the meetings in a big way defying all government obstructions for urgent change so that their hardship can be eased. The government has no control over the market and it is in a rickety condition to improve the miseries of the people as prices of essential commodities have gone well beyond their capacity. The market syndicates are formed by the government’s own people. Thousand of men, women and children are going hungry or affording only one meal a day. The BNP leaders must not be in any confusion. Their urgent need is to raise the issue of public sufferings of the people in their meetings as urgently as possible.
When the people will express their fury, the election politics will not have any consideration. There will be violence and anarchy.
The government is considering politics as a fight between thugs. They are calling the opposition to meet in a battlefield for a physical show of power on the 10th December when BNP has planned to organise the biggest congregation in Dhaka.
In our view only brave speeches at mass gatherings create no anxiety for the government. By abusing state power and money, the government will also be able to hold big meetings. If the police remains away from power politics, that will be a crisis for the government. International pressure is increasing on the government not to go violent.
Some Awami League leaders asked those who want change should go to Pakistan. Those who instead of facing the Pakistan army went to India may go to India as their country of choice. The brave Bangladeshis who stayed in the country and suffered in the hands of Pakistan army are not ready to tolerate those who are showing the audacity to ask the brave Bangladeshis to go to Pakistan.
Bangladeshis have every right to fight for change to have government of their own. It is those who returned from India with their anti-democracy agenda has helped to kill democracy in Bangladesh. Both Bangabandhu and his family stayed in Pakistan. Any patriotic government should avoid them. Bangabandhu failed and suffered.
Arrests by police will not change the truth or sending people to suffer imprisonments will not suppress the people’s fiery demand for the change of the failed and self-serving government to go without loss of time. Any political government would have known it was time to go and avoided violence.