The Bangladesh Awami League has condemned the unconstitutional interim government, backed by Jamaat-e-Islami, for carrying out a deadly crackdown at the dead of the night against unarmed citizens in Gopalganj, after killing five people with gunshots.
The killings mark โanother blatant abuse of state machinery to terrorise and quash public outbursts against Yunus’s divisive path, mob rule, and the effort to erase the founding principles of the country that include secularism and pluralism,โ the party said in a statement early Saturday.
Meanwhile, the associated organisations of the Awami League have declared a nationwide general strike for Sunday in protest against the massacre in Gopalganj.
The self-proclaimed chief adviser, Muhammad Yunus, regime is attempting to exterminate the citizens in Gopalganj simply because they rejected his mob commanders from the National Citizen Party (NCP). โThe law enforcement machinery carrying out block raids, torturing and arbitrarily arresting hundreds of unarmed citizens from their houses throughout the night, flaunting every single facet of human rights.โ
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The party protested in strong terms the effort by the Press Wing on behalf of the chief adviser to place the blame on the families of the victims over their burial without an autopsy.
The statement also urged the global community to consider the statements of family members of victims and witnesses, which are already available on social media and mainstream media.
Reports said the hospital authorities and police denied the families their right to conduct autopsies, and government authorities refused to issue death certificates to the victims who died of bullet wounds fired by law enforcement.
Police file 3 cases
Three cases have been filed on charges of attacking police, vandalising and setting fire to vehicles, and engaging in anti-state activities.
In the last two days, police have filed the cases at Sadar, Kashiani and Kotalipara police stations, naming 157 people, including Newton Molla, the president of the Gopalganj district branch of the banned Chhatra League, and Ataur Rahman.
An unknown number of 2,200 people have been named as accused in these cases.
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From last Wednesday to Friday afternoon, the law enforcement agencies conducted raids in various places in the district and arrested 164 people, media reports said early Saturday.
The fifth victim is rickshaw-puller Ramzan Munshi, who was hit by a bullet on Wednesday. As his condition deteriorated, Ramzan was shifted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital from Gopalganj the same night. He succumbed to his injuries at 1:45am on Friday.
Ramzan Munshi’s elder brother, Jamal Munshi, said an autopsy was conducted on the body at the DMC morgue.
Perpetrators get impunity
The Awami League statement mentioned that Yunus commended law enforcement for these gruesome rights abuses and the veiled authorisation of Asif Mahmud, the mob leader-turned-adviser, and Lt Gen (Retd) Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, the home adviser, from the police control room to decimate anyone associated with the Awami League.
โAll are tantamount to staging a farcical trial process and emboldening the perpetrators with impunity.โ
The government has not extended any help to the family members of victims, while the police also refused to register cases in connection with the extrajudicial killings. Thus, the regime is brazenly abusing state machinery to deny justice to the victims and cover up the use of lethal weapons and live bullets by the security apparatus on citizens to suppress a spontaneous movement against the regime.
The statement added that under the Yunus regime, the victims of this state-sponsored terror in Gopalganj will not get justice; rather, they will face further repression under the pretext of the curfew.
โWe would like to remind all that several hundred party activists and leaders were subjected to targeted killing for their political beliefs, and hundreds of thousands of dissenters, including journalists and rights activists, were arrested over the past 11 months, but all of them were denied justice, and the regime sought to justify these gruesome acts of rights abuses with meticulous denial and imposing an extrajudicial ban on the party.
โWe reiterate that people are scared of law enforcement machinery as the regime has turned the security apparatus into a weapon against dissenters emboldened by total lack of accountability and a deafening global silence,โ the party said.
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