The Jamaat-e-Islami celebration is supporting the opposition’s protests demanding PM Sheikh Hasina’s resignation.
The chief of Jamaat-e-Islami (Bangladesh Islamic Meeting), Bangladesh’s largest Muslim celebration, has been arrested days after he introduced the celebration would be a part of opposition-led protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
“Shafiqur Rahman was arrested from his residence at round 1 am on thirteenth December [19:00 GMT, December 12],” a assertion from the celebration’s performing secretary basic, Maulana ATM Masum, mentioned on Tuesday.
“We’re vehemently condemning and protesting his arrest,” Masum mentioned, calling the authorities for his rapid and unconditional launch.
For years, Jamaat, the nation’s third-largest political celebration, which has been banned from contesting elections since 2012, was a significant ally of the principle opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Celebration (BNP) and their coalition dominated the nation between 2001-2006.
However after Hasina got here to energy in 2009, Jamaat’s whole management was arrested and tried for struggle crimes relationship again to the nation’s 1971 independence struggle towards Pakistan.
5 of its prime leaders had been hanged between 2013 and 2016 after they had been discovered responsible by a struggle crimes court docket. Tons of of celebration activists had been shot useless and tens of hundreds had been detained after they staged violent protests towards the executions.
The celebration known as the trials politically motivated and a part of a wider vendetta towards its leaders.
“In poor health efforts are happening to destroy the management of Jamaat-e-Islami,” learn the Jamaat assertion. “On one hand, they’re speaking of democracy and election, whereas on the opposite they’re oppressing … the opposition leaders and activists. Virtually, they don’t consider in democracy.”
Police final month additionally arrested Rahman’s son, Rafat Sadik Saifullah, on extremism costs and remanded him in custody beneath the nation’s harsh “anti-terrorism” legal guidelines.
Rahman’s arrest got here amid a seamless crackdown by the federal government since Saturday when tens of hundreds of BNP leaders and supporters led a rally protesting towards hovering gasoline costs and price of dwelling within the nation.
The opposition has been demanding Hasina step down and let a caretaker authorities maintain free and truthful elections because the South Asian garment manufacturing hub battled an rising financial disaster.
The BNP has additionally demanded the discharge of Begum Khaleda Zia, the 76-year-old celebration head and two-time prime minister who has been in jail since being convicted on two counts of corruption in 2018.
The federal government’s crackdown has seen greater than 2,000 BNP politicians and supporters – together with the celebration’s de facto chief and basic secretary, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir – arrested on costs of inciting violence in the course of the rally, by which no less than one particular person was killed and dozens, together with a number of cops, injured.
Jamaat and a number of other left-leaning and centrist events have supported the BNP’s calls for. Additionally they introduced they might maintain joint protests with the BNP within the coming days.
Hasina, in energy since 2009, has had two nationwide elections stained by opposition boycotts and alleged electoral malpractices beneath her watch.
Her authorities’s heavy-handed approaches to suppress political opposition and dissenters have additionally attracted extreme criticism from human rights activists and impartial observers.
Western governments together with the United Nations have expressed considerations over the political local weather in Bangladesh, one of many fastest-growing economies in Asia.
The Western embassies and the UN issued a joint assertion final week, calling for Bangladesh to permit free expression, peaceable meeting and truthful elections.