Editors Council's president accuses section in Bangladesh's interim govt of allowing violence

Dhaka: Bangladesh’s newspaper Editors Council's President on Saturday accused a “section of the interim government” of allowing the recent spate of violence after the death of Inqilab Mancha leader Sharif Osman Hadi.

Hadi was shot in the head on December 12 during an election campaign in Dhaka. He was airlifted to Singapore for advanced treatment but died of his injuries on December 18.

The same evening, a mob set on fire the offices of two mass circulation newspapers, Daily Star and Prothom Alo. Over half a century-old progressive cultural groups, Chayanat and Udichi Shilpi Goshthi, in the capital were also destroyed. They also lynched a Hindu factory worker in central Mymensingh.

“We clearly know an announcement came to demolish the Prothom Alo, Daily Star and the Chhyanat one or two days before the attacks. The people of the country know, and the government as well knows who gave the announcement,” Editors Council President Nurul Kabir said at an event of the Broadcast Journalists Centre (BJC).

Kabir, who is the editor of the New Age newspaper, said under the country’s law, such announcements are a “criminal offence”.

“Yet the government did not arrest them to prevent the mayhem . . . that is why we said indeed a section of the government allowed the rampage to go on,” Kabir said.

He alleged an organised force carried out the attacks, and those who were arrested so far in connection with the incidents, “the political identity of theirs was revealed clearly”.

Interim government’s Information and Broadcast Adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan, however, said at the event that those who staged the arson attacks were “our common adversaries” as they also tried to “intimidate me by hurling bombs in front of my house”.

Hasan said the media and the government were needed to fight back the common adversary and “it will not yield any result if one thinks the other as rivals”.

Kabir’s comments came three days after Hadi’s brother Omar Hadi alleged that a section within the interim government plotted the killing to derail the upcoming general election slated for February 12.

“It is you who got Osman Hadi killed, and now you are trying to foil the election by using this as an issue. Those who are in power when Osman Hadi was killed, you won't be able to evade responsibility,' Omar told a protest rally in the capital staged by Inqilab Mancha on Tuesday.

Hours after his claim, Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus’ special assistant on home affairs, Muhammad Khuda Baksh Chowdhury, resigned from the position.

Omar said that the government must 'immediately expose the entire group involved' in his brother's killing to the nation or “otherwise, you will be forced to flee the country,' referencing the fate of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government.

Meanwhile, the country continued to witness incidents of violence. In a latest incident, a mob vandalised the shrine of a Sufi saint in northwestern Thakurgaon in predawn hours on Saturday, with police saying they could not yet detect the attackers.

A powerful explosion on Friday blew off the walls of an Islamic religious seminary on the outskirts of the capital, leaving four people wounded, with police saying they seized bomb making materials and crude bombs from the scene at Keraniganj area on the outskirts of the capital.

A local resident said there were no students inside the seminary at the time of the explosion.

Hadi, a staunch critic of India and the Awami League, was one of the leaders of last year's violent student-led street protest dubbed the July Uprising that toppled the Hasina-led government and later floated the Inqilab Mancha.