Dhaka, July 23 (IANS) Bangladesh’s Awami League has strongly condemned the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus for launching a harsh crackdown on anti-government protests that erupted following the recent tragic plane crash in Dhaka. According to local media reports, at least 75 students were injured during the police action and were subsequently treated at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Massive protests erupted at the crash site on Tuesday, and also outside the Secretariat building in Bangladesh’s capital, with the students demanding the immediate resignation of the interim government’s Education Advisor and Education Secretary. The tragic plane crash has so far claimed the lives of 32 people, most of them reportedly children, and injured more than 165.
The interim government’s law and education advisors, along with Yunus’s Press Secretary, who visited the institute for a site inspection following the tragic crash, faced a strong protest from students who demanded their resignations, stating that the information provided by the government related to the crash is inaccurate.
“A wave of systematic torture, deceit and suppression has been meticulously inflicted on the students, teachers, parents and staffers by the regime since a fighter jet crashed into Milestone school and college. In the last twenty-four hours, from concealing causality toll to unleashing law enforcement and applying sound grenades, tear shells, and live bullets on students, teachers and parents, the regime exposed its complete failure to deliver on welfare of the nation at the time of national crisis,” read a statement issued by the Awami League on Tuesday.
“Instead of maintaining transparency over the causality toll, the regime unleashed law enforcement to suppress protesters in its desperate bid to keep the nation in the dark. For their repeated pleas for revealing the causality list, grief-stricken students, parents and teachers were attacked by cops with total disregard for human rights, pushing the families and fellow students into further trauma,” the statement added.
The party asserted that the presence of hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and parents on the streets, with demands for removal of advisors, testified that the Yunus regime has lost its credibility.
“A sense of public anger became palpable when two advisors and press secretary of Yunus regime rejected outright by students, teachers and parents of the school during their visit to the crash site for ruling out witness accounts on death toll as disinformation,” the Awami League stated.
Criticising the interim government, the party stressed that deployment of law enforcement and use of sound grenade, live bullet, lethal weapon, on students and teachers at several places, including Milestone college, not only “undermines the regime’s responsibility to uphold human rights but also exposes its reliance on force even at the height of national crisis.”
“ We condemn this attack in the strongest terms, which sparked countrywide protests. On the medical front, patients were barred from entering hospitals while leaders from political parties and advisors were allowed to go inside the hospital and conduct photo ops with victims, a barbaric show of scoring political points even at the cost of disrupting medical services,” the party mentioned.
Highlighting lawlessness in Bangladesh, the Awami League further stated that volunteers who came to donate blood for the victims in the plane crash were attacked in police presence, while journalists were attacked, intimidated, and barred from covering the details on the impact of the crash site.
The Awami League urged the global community to raise its voice against the “ongoing brutal wave of repression unleashed by the regime and save the lives of citizens who are merely demanding justice and accountability over Yunus-sponsored repression.”
–IANS
int/scor/rs
