Bangladesh police have carried out a major nationwide anti-terror crackdown, arresting over 14,000 people in the month of Ramadan. The crackdown started four days after the wife of a police superintendent was shot and stabbed to death by unknown assailants. The killing had caused rage among the police establishment, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also vowed to wipe out radicals who attempt to establish an Islamic state in Bangladesh.

Comment:

Secular Hasina government has once again made it clear that it has absolutely no respect for Islamic emotions and sentiments by conducting arbitrary arrests in such a mammoth proportion, given that the exact cause of the death of the police officer’s wife is yet to be confirmed. Whereas, in this holy month of Ramadan, this regime’s anti-Islamic stance has filled the jailhouses with over 14,000 new detainees in its search of militants. Reality is that, according to police report, fewer than 2 percent of those picked up are suspected radicals. According to media reports, some of those detained are being made to pay bribes to secure their release and some others are being tortured to extract confessions. By doing so, government has clearly violated the Bangladesh High Court’s latest ruling to prevent torture of individuals arrested without warrant, under Section 54, on suspicion of committing an offence. Definitely we will not see any further stringent action by the apex court of Bangladesh against such defamation of the judiciary by the government.

After such a huge number of arrests as a reaction to the killing of the senior police officer’s wife, the murder case has taken a dramatic turn; now finger is being pointed towards the police officer himself. The attention is now moved away from radicals towards a ring of unknown high-operative killers. But by this time, many Islamists and political opponents have been brutally tortured and extra-judicially killed by the police force, keeping the real perpetrators behind the scene.

Moreover, every killing incident of atheist bloggers, foreign aid workers and religious minorities are being shrewdly exploited by Hasina government to realize its political objective i.e. stomping out political dissent and creating an environment of fear so that people do not raise their voices against state tyranny and speak up their mind regarding Islam.  Hence, in the last few months, whenever any foreigners or religious minorities are killed in Bangladesh with immediate claim of the actions by self-styled ‘Islamic State’ (IS), Hasina government had ruled out the possibility of the existence of IS in Bangladesh and blamed the home-grown Islamists for the actions. While in her visit to Bangladesh last month, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal commented that Bangladesh-based militants were gradually establishing links with global terror groups. As the days go by with rising number of covert killing operations and American claim of IS presence, it is now evident that Hasina government is miserably failing to tackle the unrest and unfortunately putting the country in greater peril.

Imadul Amin

Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Bangladesh