Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s amir, Dr Shafiqur Rahman, said the government had ruined the nation and called on it to accept the people’s seven-point demand at once. If the demands are not met, he warned, they will turn into a single demand, and he will be forced to make that call in the interest of the country and its people.
He was speaking as chief guest at the closing rally of the 11-party alliance’s long march, held around midnight on Saturday at the Shaheed Abrar Fahad Stadium in Kushtia town.
‘People of Kushtia, you have been waiting from the afternoon until this late hour of the night,’ Shafiqur Rahman said. ‘It is nearly 12 o’clock, and well before that the government has already struck twelve for the nation. We have come before you with your demands. The 11 parties have no demands of their own. The seven points we have taken to the streets with are all the demands of the ordinary people of this country.’
Sharply criticising the government, the Jamaat amir said it was not nurturing the new Bangladesh, free of fascism, that had been won with the blood of more than 1,400 young people. Calling the referendum held on the same day illegal while calling the parliamentary election legal was gross deception, he said. The martyrs’ main hope, he added, was to bury the dirty ways of politics and build a Bangladesh without discrimination and with justice.
Saying the government had taken more than two-thirds of the seats through election engineering and was disregarding the people’s verdict, he urged it to learn from history. ‘History is witness: whenever the people’s verdict has been ignored, those responsible have met a sorry end,’ he warned. ‘Accept the people’s seven points while you still can, or the movement will become a one-point movement.’
The rally was chaired by Khandaker AKM Ali Muhsin, amir of the Kushtia district Jamaat. Other speakers included top leaders of the alliance: Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) president Col (retd) Oli Ahmed; Bangladesh Khelafat Majlis amir Allama Mamunul Haque; Jamaat secretary general Professor Mia Golam Parwar and assistant secretary general AHM Hamidur Rahman Azad; Jagpa spokesperson Rashed Prodhan; CUCSU vice-president Md Ibrahim Hossain (Rony); DUCSU general secretary SM Farhad; AB Party joint general secretary Abdullah Al Mamun Rana; NCP media secretary Yasir Arafat; and MP Abdul Hannan Masud.
Kushtia-2 MP Abdul Gafur, Kushtia-3 (Sadar) MP Amir Hamza and Kushtia-4 MP Afzal Hossain were present at the rally, along with thousands of leaders and activists of the 11-party alliance and members of the public.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report