Azizul Islam Bhuiyan
This is considered a happy ending as the student movement across
the country against quota system in the government jobs has come to an amicable
solution with their demand satisfactorily reflected in the Supreme Court
verdict over the issue. In fact, the government had never been against the
justified demand of the students who took to the streets on July 1 to press the
government to reform the quota system.
But the nation witnessed an apocalyptic situation when the
peaceful student movement turned into violent mayhem by the political activists
and miscreants that left over 100 people including three policemen dead and
several thousand injured.
There was a proof that activists of Bangladesh Nationalist
Party (BNP) and Jamaat had been lurking among the quota protesters and behind
the week-long unrest across the country. It was clear when BNP Secretary
General Fakrul Islam made a statement at the fag-end of the peaceful students’ protests
saying that this student movement must be metamorphosed into an anti-government
weapon.
That had happened exactly as Fakrul’s incitements had spread
among the miscreants of BNP and Jamaat like wild fires and they went berserk
throughout the country. Otherwise, this
is inconceivable that quota protesters who were mostly students from the public
and private universities and other educational institutions could run amok in
such a way that had taken the entire nation by surprise.
This is now clear that anti-government and anti-liberation
elements lurking among the quota protesters had reared their head to cash in on
the situation in order to destabilize the country. They tried to fish in
troubled waters with an attempt to topple the government by capitalizing on the
sentiment of young students.
Leaders of the anti-quota protesters had already made it
clear that the general students were not involved in any sort of violent
activities as they had been continuing their agitation peacefully since July 1.
They also said they were not responsible for the deaths of students and other
people and serious damage to the state properties done by the miscreants.
The whole nation was shocked, stilled and then enraged by
their inordinate scale of destruction of government properties across the
country. Dhaka still bears the brunt of their vandalism as dozens of very
critical government establishments and vital service providing institutions
like Bangladesh Television, Internet Data Center, Metro Rail stations, Mayor Hanif Flyover,
Padma Bridge, Director General of Health
Services, Drug Administration Bhavan, Matsya Bhavan, Elevated Expressway, Awami
League offices and other public and private entities came under attack of
arsonists and miscreants.
Outside
Dhaka, the most horrific incident was the Narsinghdi Jail break. Activists of
Jamaat and BNP stormed the district jail of Narsinghdi and managed to make around
850 prisoners escape. Most im portantly, 7 of them are from the banned militant
group of Ansarullah Bangla Team and 2 of them are female members of the JMB.
They also made off with 85 weapons from the jail’s armory. This is first time in the history of
Bangladesh since our independence in 1971 that such kind of biggest jail-break
took place in the country.
When the situation literally spun out of control after such
heinous terrorist acts, the government was impelled to impose a nation-wide
curfew from Friday midnight to prevent further loss of lives and properties
with the deployment of armed forces to aid civil administration.
But everyday’s life has started to
return to normal from an apocalyptic
situation as the curfew was extended for another two days until today
(Thursday) but relaxed for seven hours from 10am to 5pm to facilitate the
movement of general people. However, the government did not extend the general
holidays after three days. As a result, offices of all the government,
semi-government, autonomous bodies and other private organizations started
functioning from Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the government was also
able to restore the broadband Internet services after five days from Tuesday
midnight. The Internet outage had
actually left the entire nation in the dark and disconnected Bangladesh from the
outside world.
With the relaxation of the curfew, inter-district
transportation has been restored and agricultural produce mainly perishable
goods have started entering Dhaka and other major cities where there have been
acute shortages of these items. This is why prices of some essential
commodities went up exorbitantly in the urban areas causing immense sufferings
to the citizenry from all strata especially those who scrape by on their daily
earnings.
But we strongly believe that
normalcy will return to the country shortly as our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
has assured the nation that the government will rein in the terrorists as soon
as possible.
