Most dreaded and much depised, they belong to the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student front of the ruling Awami League, who have earned dubious distinction owing to involvement of some of them in frequent wrangle, extortion, violent crimes like rape, manslaughter and what have you since long. Even during the incumbency of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was then Prime Minister, in internecine fratricide over establishing supremacy one faction of the BCL gunned down seven members of the same party on 4 April 1974 in the Surja Sen Hall dormitory of the Dhaka University (DU) campus for the first time in the varsity’s history.
What is more, with Sheikh Hasina herself as the chief guest at the TSC in DU at the founding anniversary of the BCL on 9 January 1992, BCL activist Moniruzzaman Badal was shot dead. Afterwards until recent times some 65 murders have happened on public university and college campuses across the country.
Given that usually members of the proctorial team or police are entrusted with maintaining campus security, but the current administration seems to be depending more on the activists of the pro-Awami League student body for the job. In case of the two latest incidents, the authorities did not call the police, and the BCL men foiled the students’ protests, harassed female students and beat up demonstrators. On 23 January, several hundred BCL men from the DU as well as from outside attacked a group of students and leaders and activists of left-leaning student organisations to “rescue” DU Vice Chancellor Prof Akhtaruzzaman, who was kept confined in front of his office by the protestors. At least 50 male and female students and two journalists were injured in the attack.
The students were demonstrating to press home their four-point demand, including punishment of the BCL men who harassed some female students a few days ago. The demonstrators were staging a sit-in before the VC’s office demanding cancellation of the affiliation of seven colleges with the DU. Earlier on January 15, BCL men foiled another demonstration on the campus, harassed female students and beat up the protest coordinator, before handing him over to the authorities. On that day, Sources at the proctor’s office said that the DU authorities called in the BCL men on both occasions.
What an oxymoron, what a pradox: They are students and simultaneously, to all intens and purposes, criminals. Let alone university teachers, nowhere under the sun teachers are beaten up, but it happened in this wretched country: on 29 August 2015, activists of BCL assaulted a group of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), teachers who were protesting the vice-chancellor’s alleged corruption and irregularities. After the attack, Prof Muhammed Zafar Iqbal, noted educationist and a popular science-fiction writer who had played a key role in founding the university 30 years ago, sat in the rain for several hours in protest. His wife Prof Yasmeen Haque, another founding figure of the SUST, was among the teachers who the BCL members assaulted.
Call them by any name extortionists, hooligans, ruffians, mafia, Cosa Nostra, reprobates or hoodlums these armed gangs perfectly fit in all categories of crimes. The Jahangirnagar University (JU) Syndicate expelled BCL leader Jasimuddin Manik. A student had brought an allegation of rape against Manik in 1995 but no action was taken then. This student was involved in more rapes and celebrated his 100th sexual assault.. Rapes did occur in JU and female students were victims, the perpetrators were students, and these students were confident they could act with impunity.
Incontrovertibly a deplorable reality, Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student body of the ruling Awami League, over the years has degenerated into a horrifying entity which is active in all the public universities and colleges. Violent incidents of killing rivals, gunfights over securing government contracts, swooping upon political rallies of opposition BNP along with police, sexual misdemeanour etc, resembling savage brutality of trigger-happy bandits, make screaming headlines in the media. When 8 persons are killed and over 400 are injured in the first 7 months of a year in internecine clash among two or more groups of the BCL, as it happened in 2015, it does depict their monstrosity. See a news report in the daily Jugantar dated 4 August 2016.
According to media reports, such incidents have resulted in over 125 deaths in the last eight years with the latest casualty being a BCL activist in Sylhet. The victims include 60 BCL leaders and activists killed in internal feuds and 11 BCL men who died in clashes with rival organisations. The rest 54 are children and common people. The BCL men started to draw widespread condemnation for their unruly behaviour immediately after the AL returned to power in January 2009. [Vide the Daily Star, July 19, 2017]
To recount the broad daylight murder by BCL varsity students, a pall of gloom still hangs over downtown Dhaka which has not witnessed a similar grotesque political murder of an apolitical innocent young man by a group of varsity students. People still convulse and shudder at the horrifying slaughter of Biswajit Kumar Das, son of Ananta Kumar Das, who hailed from Noria area of Shariatpur district. Activists of the Jagannath University (JnU) unit of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) hacked to death Biswajit Das at Bahadur Shah Park area in Old Dhaka on 9 December 2012.
Given the attitudinal position of the power that be, we expect the guardians of the BCL will brood over their thoroughly criminalised Frankensteins’ misdeeds and punish them. Therefore, hoping against hopes, we request its political high command to restrain them and punish them because violence breeds violence like domino effect.
Courtesy: Weekly Holiday/Jan 26, 2018
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