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 appearing secretary normal, Maulana ATM Masum, stated on Tuesday.
“We're vehemently condemning and protesting his arrest,” Masum stated, calling the authorities for his fast 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 Occasion (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 conflict crimes courting again to the nation’s 1971 independence conflict in opposition to Pakistan.
5 of its high leaders have been hanged between 2013 and 2016 after they have been discovered responsible by a conflict crimes courtroom. Tons of of celebration activists have been shot useless and tens of hundreds have been detained after they staged violent protests in opposition to the executions.
The celebration referred to as the trials politically motivated and a part of a wider vendetta in opposition to its leaders.
“Unwell efforts are occurring 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 imagine in democracy.”
Police final month additionally arrested Rahman’s son, Rafat Sadik Saifullah, on extremism costs and remanded him in custody underneath the nation’s harsh “anti-terrorism” legal guidelines.
Rahman’s arrest got here amid a persevering with crackdown by the federal government since Saturday when tens of hundreds of BNP leaders and supporters led a rally protesting in opposition to hovering gas costs and value of dwelling within the nation.
The opposition has been demanding Hasina step down and let a caretaker authorities maintain free and honest 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 normal secretary, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir – arrested on costs of inciting violence through the rally, by which not less than one individual was killed and dozens, together with a number of law enforcement officials, injured.
Jamaat and several 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 underneath 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 issues 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 honest elections.
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