Tensions sparks with IndIa: BNP urges UN intervention

Staff Reporter :

The BNP on Tuesday urged the interim government to seek UN peacekeeping force’s support to ensure security for the staff of Bangladesh’s diplomatic missions in the neighboring country India as New Delhi has failed to protect them.

“Our diplomatic staffs are suffering from a sense of insecurity in India. In this situation, the Bangladesh government should seek assistance from the UN for providing their peacekeeping force and to take measures for the security of our staffs in diplomatic missions there,” BNP Senior Joint-Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said on Tuesday at a press conference in the BNP central office in Nayapaltan.

The BNP leader focused the attack on Bangladesh Assistant High Commission at Agartala, India. He said being instigated by the BJP government, the terrorists carried out the brutal attack on the Bangladesh Assistant High Commission in Kunjaban, Agartala amid the silent presence of the members of the law enforcement agencies.

“The BJP government is more upset than the fallen dictator Hasina following the ouster of the AL regime in Bangladesh,” Rizvi said.

The BJP men tore down the national flag, set it on fire, vandalised the flagpole and damaged the property inside the assistant high commission, he said.

“This unprecedented attack on the diplomatic mission in Agartala is a clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961,” said the BNP leader.

Though the Indian government staged the drama to express regret for the attack, the instances of aggressive interference India did in Bangladesh’s internal affairs in the past created further resentment (in Bangladesh), he added.

“We would like to tell the extremist Hindus of India, your friendship is with Sheikh Hasina. The open hostility you have shown against the people of Bangladesh to protect that friendship is not a good neighbourly behavior,” he added.

Rizvi said their (Indians’) friend Hasina has taken shelter there in India after killing thousands of people (in Bangladesh). “Be satisfied with her (giving her shelter). Remember, Bangladesh became independent at the cost of millions of lives, not to be a slave to Delhi. The slave who wanted to be a servant is now on your feet,” he said.

The BNP leader claimed that the Indian BJP government and extremists have gone madder than Hasina after she lost power and was ousted. They are desperately spreading propaganda, he alleged.

About West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s call for sending the UN peacekeeping forces to Bangladesh, Rizvi said Bangladeshi missions in India are now unprotected and a video went viral where a member of Bangladeshi mission was being beaten brutally.

“Even then, Mamata Banerjee will say so. Bangladesh doesn’t need peacekeeping forces, rather India does,'” he said, adding that it is also necessary to send UN peacekeeping forces to Kashmir, Assam and Manipur in India.

Rizvi said countless atrocities against minority communities are happening all the time in India, but the country has no regret or remorse for the incidents. As part of a master plan, India is expressing unnecessary concern and anger over the situation in Bangladesh, he added.

“To destabilise Bangladesh is a part of India’s master plan so that Bangladesh can’t function properly… This is their international master plan and the people of Bangladesh think that an outside country is involved in this (in destabilising Bangladesh),” he said.

The BNP leader said the Indian media are continuously singing choruses and spreading propaganda against Bangladesh. “They are slandering the supreme sacrifices and contributions of the student masses to this country’s democratic movement,” he said.

BNP leaders Abul Khair Bhuiyan, Tahmina Rushdir Luna, Abdus Salam Azad and Mir Sarafat Ali Sapu, among others, were present at the press conference.

Meanwhile, thousands of BNP leaders and activists brought a procession led by Ruhul Kabir Rizvi in front of the BNP’s central office protesting the attack on the Bangladesh mission in the neighboring country.