A team of “Bangladesh Rukhe Darao”, a platform of progressive and pro-liberation forces, recently visited parts of Satkhira district that have been wrecked by violence by suspected Jamaat-Shibir activists over the past few weeks.
A seven-member team, led by journalist Abed Khan, visited the house of Azharul Islam Aju, a local Awami League leader who was killed on the night of December 12 when Jamaat-e-Islami leader and convicted war criminal Abdul Quader Mollah was executed.
According to Aju’s family members, supporters of Jamaat and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, hacked the hapless victim to death around 11pm, soon after Quader Molla was hanged at the Dhaka Central Jail.
Aju had sought shelter at his father’s grave to save his life, but the assailants found him and hacked him to death in front of his family, said his widow, Nahar Begum. The killers also stopped the family from burying Aju’s body immediately, she added.
Aju was the president of AL’s ward No 8 unit under Kolaroya municipality.
Local Jamaat-Shibir activists had been threatening to kill Aju since February, when Jamaat leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee was handed the death penalty for crimes against humanity in 1971, his family said.
The members of “Rukhe Darao” (resist) called upon the local people to build resistance against anti-liberation forces.
The team also talked to shop-owners whose establishments were vandalised or torched by Jamaat-Shibir activists following Mollah’s hanging.
“The way local Jamaat-Shibir men have been creating unrest in the district, it seems the district does not belong to Bangladesh. They have created a dominion in the area considering it as Pakistan,” one of the affected shopkeepers said.
The victims further claimed that local AL leaders were not taking any steps against the Jamaat-Shibir activists.
The team also visited Kuchpukur village at Satkhira Sadar, and Debhata and Kaliganj upazilas.
Dhaka University professors Kaberi Gayen and Ziaur Rahman, actress Rokeya Prachi, Information Commissioner Sadeka Halim and cultural activist Tarek Aziz were the other team members.
