On the 44th anniversary of her father’s rousing 19-minute speech, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spoke for 35 minutes yesterday mostly harping on political rhetoric at the Suhrawardy Udyan.
The premier had little to say about how the ongoing political crisis might end. But she made a call to the people urging them to resist violence.
Referring to the petrol bombs, the tools of choice for the anti-government campaigners calling for new elections, Hasina urged the people to stand up to them. She also issued a stiff warning for BNP chief Khaleda Zia saying that the latter would be taken to task for orchestrating violence all over the country.
“She will be tried and she will also be punished,” said Hasina, also president of the ruling Awami League, as she called her opposite number in BNP the queen of militancy.
The BNP-led 20-party alliance, effectively the main political opposition, has been enforcing non-stop blockades and general strikes since January 6 as Khaleda was barred from getting out of her office to attend a protest rally marking one year of the general election that the opposition alliance had boycotted.
The two-month campaign to topple the government has so far killed 86 people. Of them, 70 had no political affiliation. Over 50 people including women and children were burnt to death in petrol bomb attacks. Another 35 were killed in what the law enforcers claim to be crossfires or gunfights.
Referring to BNP’s key ally Jamaat-e-Islami, which violently opposed Bangladesh’s liberation, Hasina said: “Friends of those opposed to liberation are carrying out violence across the country. They are killing people in the name of a democratic movement.”
“It was BNP chief Khaleda Zia’s mistake to have boycotted the January 5 poll [in 2014]. But now she is killing people when they have rejected her blockades and hartals. For whose sake is she killing people?” asked the prime minister.
Currently on her second consecutive term, Hasina said the BNP chief had become desperate for power and was using every means possible to get into office.
“I tell you categorically, you will not be able to ride to power through militancy and violence. The people have rejected you. The foreigners have also asked you to stop violence,” the premier added.
Hasina recalled her father’s speech of March 7, 1971. The founding president of Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had called upon the people of the erstwhile East Pakistan to rise up against the Pakistani junta with whatever they had.
Mujib had famously proclaimed: “This time the battle is for liberation. This time the battle is for independence.” A nine-month war broke out on March 26. Bangladesh gained independence on December 16 that same year.