BNP Vice Chairman Major (retd) Hafiz Uddin Ahmed on Thursday said Bangladesh may get involved in wars due to international pressure in the coming years and therefore the youth of the country should be kept ready.
He was speaking after attending a meeting of a BNP committee formed for the upcoming Independence Day celebrations.
He said: "Through military training, as in South Korea, Israel and other countries , the students and youth will become a citizens’ army... so that the common people of the whole country can resist if the country's sovereignty is ever threatened in the future."
“The BNP will take initiatives so that students and youth can join the struggle along with the armed forces if we come to such situations in the future,” he added.
Major (retd) Hafiz said the ruling Awami League does not want to give any credit to those who fought against the Pakistan army on the battlefield. The political party had contributions; it had the right to hold state power as it had won the election. But the Pakistani military rulers did not respect the democratic mandate.
The BNP leader said the Awami League thinks that the independence of Bangladesh had been achieved by it alone, denying the contributions of the masses, including students, youths, workers, farmers and soldiers, who made supreme sacrifices.
Seven crore people in the country at the time unitedly participated in the war. But the ruling party is trying to project the Liberation War as a "political party's war".
Zia's declaration of independence motivated people from every corner to join the Liberation War, but today the AL portrays him as an agent of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), he claimed.
The BNP vice chairman said that the AL is distorting the history of the Liberation War. "During the war, the number of freedom fighters was 80,000-100,000, but today we're seeing about 250,000 getting allowances along with other benefits as freedom fighters," he was quoted as saying by UNB.