Opposition arrests and repression: ‘Govt set to conduct one-sided vote by tainting pre-polls environment’
Staff Reporter :
The political tapestry has now etched two portraits ahead of the 12th parliamentary election on January 7 as the ruling party is conducting polls unilaterally while BNP is battered with arrests and repression by the law enforcers every day, claims a senior BNP leader.
BNP has been stating that their party leaders and workers are either facing new cases or hiding in uncharted places to evade arrests.
The opposition political parties, including BNP, said that the level of repression has intensified so gravely that the leaders and workers of BNP are being indicted with old cases.
BNP said that the government is holding a ‘farcical’ election and framing trumped-up charges against their people.
BNP’s Senior Joint-Secretary Ruhul Kabir Rizvi on Monday said that some two crore people have left their homes to eschew police arrests while around 20,000 freedom loving people are languishing behind bars.
“In the last 24-hour period, 355 leaders and workers were arrested, 70 were injured. At least 14 cases were filed against 1265 leaders and workers,” he told the journalists in a virtual press conference.
Even on Monday, a Dhaka court framed charges against 45 leaders and activists of BNP including its Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi and its Dhaka Metropolitan North Convenor Amanullah Aman in a sabotage case filed with Mohammadpur Police Station eight years ago.
Protesting the repressive action of the law enforcers and the Election Commission’s move for election, BNP has been continuing their on-ground programes like blockade, hartal or human chains.
Amid this situation, the international bodies including the United Nations, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the United States are calling for an end of repression against the opposition.
The HRW has recently expressed concern over the mass arrests and repression and termed such actions as ‘autocratic crackdown ahead of election.’
Even in their statement on Nov 26, HRW also mentioned that almost 10,000 opposition activists have been arrested since a planned rally by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on October 28.
“At least 16 people have been killed during ongoing violence, including two police officers. Over 5,500 people have been injured,” the organisation said.
The HRW has again tweeted the report on December 2, under the headline ‘Bangladesh: Violent Autocratic Crackdown Ahead of Elections.’, which clearly expresses its concerns ahead of the election.
In addition to HRW, the UN and the US has repeatedly said that they want to see a free, fair, peaceful and inclusive election and they further emphasised that election does not mean only the polling day rather the entire atmosphere before and after the election.
Defying all these international calls, the government and the law enforcers said that the opposition is being arrested for committing violence and there was no political motive behind it.
As the major opposition BNP and some other political parties are out of the election, the government and the Election Commission have now fielded ‘dummy’ candidates to evade the chances of uncontested election because the parliamentary election in 2014 witnessed some 154 candidates elected unopposed as BNP boycotted the poll.
