A POLICEMAN grabbing a protester by the belt during a procession that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the ruling Awami League’s political arch-rival, brought out in Dhaka on Monday, betrays, on the one hand, how cruelly the police started behaving, or have been made to behave, with the political opponents and, on the other hand, how the government, presided over by the Awami League, has shrunken the democratic space for the people even when they hold programmes that are largely peaceful. As the BNP procession, brought out from the north gate of the National Mosque Baitul Mukarram as part of a seven-day programme demanding ‘unconditional’ release of the party’s chairperson Khaleda Zia who has been in jail since February 8 convicted to five years’ imprisonment in a corruption cases, neared the Dainik Bangla crossing, the police charged at the protesters with truncheons, leaving more than 15 injured. The police also arrested at least 30 leaders and activists although the police claimed that they had arrested only seven people. The police, moreover, attacked journalists, especially of private television channels when they were covering the police attack and picked up two of them, who were later released.
The way the police attacked the BNP procession and a policeman grabbed a protester by the belt, as a photograph that New Age published on Tuesday shows, suggest that the ruling Awami League has started marching down the path of affording no space in the democratic dispensation to any political parties in the opposition camp but itself. The Awami League and its front and associate organisations are bringing out processions almost every other day somewhere across the country, but the administration, mostly the police, is not allowing other political parties to hold any protests, however peaceful. The police are noticed to be coming down heavily on all programmes of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party almost everywhere. When the national elections are to be held by the year-end, such an attitude of the government, reflected through its police force, hardly looks to be anything but to stop political programmes of political parties in the opposition camp, especially the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, from gearing up to the elections. The police are seen to come down heavily even on the media covering police atrocities, which can be construed as efforts to stop the media from covering police misdeeds.
While such an attitude of the incumbents of shrinking the democratic space for political parties in the opposition might harm the political process, especially in the election year, this also contradicts with the Awami League’s position in that it has already embarked on political campaigns yet it has left others with no scope to do so. With Khaleda Zia being in jail and the verdict in the case yet to go through two to three stages more, it is for the court to decide what would happen. But the Awami League and its partners in the government must look inwards and make some course correction to advance the democratic dispensation, and not choke it.
- Courtesy: Editorial/ NewAge /Apr 25, 2018
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