The Prime Minister has spoken to the nation. In her rather brief address, she was clearly exercised by the need to reassure the country that after the violence of the last few days, her government would do everything to ensure a return to normalcy. One hardly needs to be told that the government has been badly shaken by the incidents of manifest violence which have rocked the country.
The prime minister has promised that a judicial inquiry will be initiated into the violence which led to the death of six students. She has in what is obviously a conciliatory gesture held out the assurance that the government will do all it can to assist the families of those whose lives were put to an end through the violence at universities across the country.
Her appeal to the quota reform activists to wait for the Appellate Court judgement on the issue next month along with the reassurance that those engaged in the anti-quota movement will not be disappointed should in the natural scheme of things help tempers to cool down.
And we use the term “should” because even as we study the prime minister’s remarks, the country is confronted with reports of violence continuing to vitiate the atmosphere at our universities. The anti-quota students, who have by now been joined by larger groups of students in the movement, have spoken of assaults on them by the police, BGB, RAB and, yes, the Chhatra League.
These reports need fast corrective action. If the prime minister’s words are to be heeded by the students, it is important that they be provided with protection from the forces arrayed against them. It is important that there be no backlash visited upon the protesting students over their determined movement in recent days.
It would be the moral thing for the government to acknowledge that much of what has gone wrong in these past few days has had to do with the violence unleashed on the anti-quota students by the Chhatra League.
Graphic images of boys and girls falling prey to violence perpetrated by the Chhatra League has left millions around the country appalled. Pictures of bloodied young women and men have flooded social media, doing little credit to our national self-esteem as a society of decent people.
Worse, the warning by a minister that the Chhatra League remains prepared to tackle the anti-quota movement was not only ominous but irresponsible as well, for it empowered the student body with authority that is administratively and constitutionally that of the nation’s law enforcing agencies.
Now that the prime minister has spoken, we as a nation expect the government to reflect on all the wrong moves made in the past few days.
The propensity on the part of supporters of the ruling party to dub the protesting students as razakars was wrong fundamentally because of the fact that these students, born decades after the liberation of the country, were only voicing demands that are the staple of democracy.
To argue that these youth are razakars or neo-razakars on the basis of the slogan they raised is misplaced, firstly, because they were provoked into the act and, secondly, because only the first two lines of their slogan were picked up to undermine their cause. The remaining lines were conveniently ignored. It was cherry picking of a disturbing sort.
In light of the prime minister’s address to the nation, we expect these steamy conditions to simmer down. But for that to happen, it will be necessary for the government to exercise caution and wisdom.
That means not subjecting the anti-quota students to any form of repression or victimization through a filing of cases. That means taking to task those student followers of the ruling party whose sliding into the role of vigilantes has more than anything else brought the country to this pass.
For the anti-quota activists, it will be important to keep themselves focused on their demands and not do anything that will anymore upset the normal flow of life in the country.
Public and private transport should flow without impediment; the normal movement of people should be guaranteed; and nothing which threatens an escalation of violence should be resorted to.
The nation is in grave and urgent need of peace and stability. For that to come to pass, sanity must prevail on all sides. And governance in its judicious form is a supreme requirement.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune
This opinion piece was originally published in print version of Dhaka Tribune on July 19.