The acting secretary general of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, on Monday said the BNP was against military intervention in politics.
At a press conference at the BNP central office in the city, he announced a fresh non-stop 36-hour hartal for March 27-28 to press for release of the leaders and activists arrested on March 11.
About BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia’s reported remarks at a rally at Bogra on the army, Fakhrul accused some newspapers of presenting her statement in a different way.
BNP and its allies had earlier enforced a countrywide 36-hour general strike in March 18-19 as the government ignored the party’s March 14 ultimatum for release of its leaders and activists.
Fakhrul said at the news conference that the BNP-led 18-party alliance would enforce the fresh hartal in March 27-28 in protest at the ‘genocide’ carried out by the government, as well as to press for an election-time non-party government and resignation of the incumbent government.
He said the strike would be enforced from 6:00am on March 27 to 6:00pm on March 28.
He said restaurants, pharmacies, ambulances, vehicles
carrying food, newspapers, journalists, physicians, and fire engines would remain out of the purview of the hartal.
Fakhrul was critical of some newspapers and televisions for presenting in a ‘different way’ the comments of Khaleda Zia on the army’s possible role in the present crisis in her address at the public rallies in Bogra on Sunday.
He urged the media to present statements of leaders, particularly the leader of the opposition, ‘objectively’.
He also said the way the BNP chairperson’s remarks were reported by some newspapers could create ‘confusion’.
On Sunday, addressing a wayside meeting at Matidali Biman crossing in Bogra, Khaleda Zia, while referring to the killing of people in recent violence and police firing, had said the army would play its role in time.
Asked whether BNP wanted military intervention like the 1/11, he said no democratic political party, including BNP, could in any way want interference of the army. ‘We oppose it. We believe in people’s rule and democracy,’ Fakhrul said.
In reply to a question, he said governments in the past had sought the army’s cooperation, as they thought necessary, in maintaining law and order.
He said the army in the past had carried out its duties in general elections under the Election Commission as well as during natural calamities.
Fakhrul said that the army was called out to carry out their responsibility whenever it was thought necessary in the past.
About Awami League joint secretary Mahbub-ul-Alam Hanif’s comments that BNP did not believe in democracy, Fakhrul said people knew it well who believed in democracy and who did not.
‘People know it well who had imposed the one-party BAKSAL rule in 1975 and destroyed democracy,’ Fakhrul said.
He said BNP’s founder Ziaur Rahman had restored multi-party democracy while Khaleda Zia had restored the parliamentary system in the country.
Fakhrul said the BNP had hoped that good sense would prevail on the government and it would release the opposition leaders and activists withdrawing the ‘false’ cases by the BNP’s deadline.
But instead of doing that, the government placed remanded them in custody to ‘torture’ them.
He termed ‘unprecedented’ remand of 151 leaders and activists and framing charges against them.
BNP leaders Mirza Abbas, Rafiqul Islam Mia, Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, Salahuddin Ahmed, Jamaat-e-Islami leader Redwanullah Shahedi, Liberal Democratic Party secretary general Redwan Ahmed and National Democratic Party secretary general Alamgir Majumder, among others, were present at the news conference. (Source)
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