Prime Minister Tarique Rahman has said the opposition may keep its distance from the government, but by not standing beside those who made sacrifices in the July mass uprising and the families of the martyrs, it has made clear that it does not embrace July.
The prime minister spoke in anger that the leader of the opposition and other senior opposition figures did not attend the state ceremony at the July memorial, despite a formal invitation from the government.
He spoke after opening the newly built July memorial at Dhaka’s historic Osmani Udyan on Monday, 19 October.
Voicing his anger at the opposition’s absence at the start of his speech, the prime minister said: “Today’s event is to honour the people who made sacrifices in July. Along with senior government figures, the leader of the opposition and other top opposition figures were properly invited. You did not have to sit on the government stage, but you could have come and sat beside the July martyrs’ families and the injured, who fought at the risk of their lives.”
Tarique Rahman said plainly: “You have political distance from the government; let that distance remain, I have no objection. But the people who gave their lives, who were injured, who lost their eyes, through whose blood you are known to people today as leader of the opposition and members of parliament: you did not come among those heroes either. Had you come and stood beside these people today, we would have understood that you hold July in your hearts the way the BNP does. But your absence proves that you do not embrace July.”
He added that this political mindset of sidestepping the blood-soaked history of the July movement and the contribution of the July martyrs was deeply disappointing, and that through it the opposition had shown extreme indifference to the spirit of the July uprising and the deep feelings of ordinary people.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report