Joy made the demand through a statement posted on his Facebook profile on Wednesday
The prime minister’s ICT adviser, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, urged the government to arrest and try the editor of The Daily Star, Mahfuz Anam, and Gonoforum President Dr Kamal Hossain, in a statement posted on his Facebook profile on Wednesday.
Labelling the activities of civil society members “treason,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son wrote: “Now we know why. They [Mahfuz Anam, Kamal Hossain and Mahmudur Rahman] want the violence to continue and indeed want to help BNP-Jamaat kill more people.
“They want to blame our Awami League government no matter what so that they can ride the Army’s coat-tails back to power just like 1/11.”
“This is treason. They should all be arrested and tried,” he said.
Joy pointed to two incidents which he described as instances of treason – one concerning Mahmudur Rahman Manna and the other concerning English-language newspaper, The Daily Star.
In the first instance, Manna, in a leaked phone conversation, recommended that the opposition kill a few people on the Dhaka University campus to destabilise the governemnt, Joy alleged.
Since Manna referred to Gonoforum leader Dr Kamal Hossain by name during the conversation, Joy said he too should be arrested as a collaborator to Manna’s plans.
Manna, a former Awami League leader who later broke away to form Nagarik Oikya, is now under arrest in a criminal investigation.
The other incident centres the publication of a Hizb ut-Tahrir poster published as part of a Daily Star report on the activities of the banned militant outfit.
“The Daily Star prints a half page copy of a poster by banned terrorist outfit Hizb ut-Tahrir urging army soldiers to overthrow the government and seize power,” he said.
“They disgust me. These are people who want power but have never been elected in even a single constituency without the backing of one of the major political parties.
“Taking advantage of the BNP-Jamaat’s arson attacks on innocent civilians over the past two months, these same people have been falsely trying to claim both parties were involved in the violence,” he said, claiming this was yet another conspiracy by so-called civil society to come to power.
The ICT adviser reminded readers of his Facebook page that Kamal Hossain and Mahfuz Anam had openly urged the military to stay in power indefinitely after 1/11.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
Joy could say something like this only because the people of Bangladesh tolerated fascism for a very long time now. Time has come for the people of Bangladesh to stand up and come out in the streets to say ‘no’ to grabbing state power through farcical elections like the one on 5 January 2014. People of Bangladesh are not an ordinary people. They are the one who fought the language movement, the liberation war and upheld democratic values.