The Awami League and its allies showed the civilised world the most naked barbarity by dancing on corpses after unleashing violence with logi-boitha (poles and oars) in Paltan in the capital on 28 October 2006, Dhaka-5 MP Mohammad Kamal Hossain has said. He warned that if the killers of 28 October are not tried, and if they are given shelter and indulgence, neither the country, the nation nor democracy will be saved.
He said this as chief discussant at a seminar titled ‘Blood-soaked 28 October, the rise of fascism: challenges and tasks in building the Bangladesh we want’ at the Jatiya Press Club on Monday afternoon (26 October).
Recalling the 2006 Paltan tragedy at the seminar, Mohammad Kamal Hossain said: “28 October is a stained, black day in the history of Bangladesh’s politics. The bestiality and the naked, fiendish glee seen on the streets that day cannot be put into words. We saw how the leaders and activists of the then Awami League and the 14-party alliance danced on a corpse and showed the civilised world the height of barbarity.”
Describing his own experience as an eyewitness and a victim of that day, he said: “I was then president of Islami Chhatra Shibir. I too was seriously injured in that attack. Before our eyes, Hafez Golam Kibria Shipon, Saifullah Mohammad Masum, Jasim Uddin and Mujahidul Islam were beaten to death on the street. Shipon’s crime was that he encouraged his classmates to pray and learn the Quran. Yet they were not content with beating him; every one of his teeth was brutally broken by jabbing at him again and again.”
Setting out the background of the transfer of power, he said the hellish killing with logi-boitha was carried out in a planned way that day to stop the transfer of power in constitutional and democratic continuity at the end of the four-party alliance government’s term, and to fish in troubled waters. Following on from this, he said, the fascist force later dared to carry out the killings at Shapla Chattar, the killing of top national leaders through the judicial process and, most recently, the indiscriminate killing of students and the public in the 2024 mass uprising.
Warning the present government, Kamal Hossain said: “Do not make any kind of deal with the killers of 28 October, do not become one with them. In the past, these very killers destroyed democracy. If the government gives them shelter and indulgence, you will not be saved, and the nation will not be saved.”
He demanded that the 28 October murder cases withdrawn on political grounds be revived at once and a speedy trial ensured. He also called for the rule of law, justice and effective democracy to be established in the country by carrying out the aspirations of the July mass revolution and the ‘July Charter’.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report