BNP Vice-Chairman Sadeque Hossain Khoka, who appeared at the Hefazat-e-Islam podium on its April 6 Motijheel rally following a long-march, has denied outright his or the party’s link with the Islamist organisation, as referred to by a senior Hefazat leader in his confessional statement on Tuesday.
Khoka said he and his party had no ideological or organisational contact with Hefazat.
“I have no personal connection with [Hefazat Secretary General Junaid] Babunagari and do not know him. I see him in the media. Neither I or any other leader of the BNP was assigned or even needed to be assigned to coordinate with the Hefazat because we do not have that much organisational or ideological contact with them,” he said in a signed press release.
Like other political parties, Khoka said, the BNP publicly extended support to the Hefazat’s protests against those hurting sentiment of the majority Muslims. “We also publicly protested against the ruling party and the government’s interference in Hefazat’s peaceful programmes.”
During Hefazat’s long-march, the BNP served the group's “guests” who came to Dhaka with food and water on “humanitarian grounds.” Leaders and activists of the governing alliance also supported the Hefazat activists, he said.
Babunagari told a Dhaka court that the activists of Jamaat, its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, and the BNP’s front bodies, Jubo Dal and Chhatra Dal, intruded on the May 5 Hefazat programme to unleash violence in their bid to oust the government. He said the city unit of the BNP-led 18-party opposition provided all sorts of financial support for the successful blockade.
Khoka alleged that the administrative failure of the home ministry caused the daylong violence in Paltan and around Motijheel that day.
Also the convener of Dhaka city unit BNP, Khoka questioned how the “fictional stories” on the confession came to media when there was supposed to be no one other than the magistrate present during the deposition.
The former Dhaka mayor said no one would believe that he and the BNP had financed and conspired to put Hefazat chief Ahmad Shafi and Babunagari in power. Rather he thinks the home minister, through the police, is trying to harass him by spreading fabricated information.
Different media reports on Babunagari’s confessional statement at the court implicating the BNP, the 18-party alliance and him were completely untrue, baseless and ill-motivated, he claimed.
The BNP leader claimed Hefazat was a non-political group comprising alems and madrasa teachers and students. They did not have any political ambition and they were not demonstrating to oust a government or help others to take power.
However, senior Hefazat leaders ahead of and on the day of the May 5 programme threatened that it would not allow the government stay in power if its 13-point demands were not met.
During the "Dhaka siege," Hefazat supporters blocked the six entry points to capital, and later marched on Motijheel to hold an unscheduled rally. At the time it pledged that the siege would end by 6pm. But later the rally leaders said their sit-in would continue until the government accepted their demands.
The BNP is also widely criticised for asking party leaders, activists and Dhaka residents to join the Hefazat sit-in that night.
Khoka said: “In the evening when we learned that Hefazat was protesting against the attacks and threats by declaring a peaceful sit-in at Motijheel, the BNP urged its supporters and the people of Dhaka to assist them with food and water as we did the previous time.”
But this had not been possible because of the presence of law enforcement agencies and ruling party cadres and “a ghostly ambience created due to power cut.”
“We were sorry to hear that a brutal operation was launched on the religious people, some of who were sleeping while the others were praying, to evacuate the Shapla Chattar. To prevent protests against the brutal attack, the government clamped down state of emergency, unannounced, banning meetings and rallies and also shut down two [pro-opposition] private television channels,” he said.
Khoka also alleged that, to conceal the “crimes,” the government managed to take control of the media and had started repressing the opposition through propaganda.
He said: “As part of it, the government has propagated a humorous story using the media in the name of Babunagari’s statement. We know that during a statement under Section 164, no one will be present apart from the magistrate. So now it has become a question of who spread the fairy tales implicating the BNP, 18-party alliance and me in the name of a confessional statement.”