The Ministry of Education is yet to bring to book those involved in torturing and arresting students and teachers during the state of emergency, despite a recommendation by a parliamentary committee.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on the ministry, formed to investigate the 2007 student demonstrations, submitted its report to Parliament 18 months ago on Feb 6, 2012.
The report proposed trials for the former army-backed caretaker government mandarins – Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed and army chief General Moeen U Ahmed and four others.
It put out 13 recommendations and 11 observations to prevent a repeat of the torture and the arrests during the 2007 demonstrations.
Rashed Khan Menon, who headed the committee, expressed dissatisfaction because the recommendations have not been implemented.
“The committee made those recommendations following investigation. We’ve done our bit… Now the government has to implement our recommendations,” he said.
He said the committee will want to find out what the government had done to implement its recommendations in its next meeting.
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid, however, said his ministry was not ‘solely responsible’ for implementing those recommendations. “The education ministry can’t implement all of those recommendations.”
“We can’t take action against police,” he told bdnews24.com. “We’ve informed the ministries concerned about those recommendations.”
“What can we really do, if those ministries do not function properly?” he asked.
The law keepers unleashed a wave of violence on the teachers and students of the University of Dhaka between Aug 20 and Aug 23 in 2007 following an altercation between some army personnel and university students in the playground.
Four teachers and several students were arrested then.
The students assaulted some senior army officers, rampaged through the capital and other cities on that day, burning or damaging dozens of vehicles as they clashed with police.
In face of other strong student movements, those arrested were released later.
The then army-backed caretaker government formed a judicial inquiry committee to investigate the incident. But it was not accepted by the parliamentary committee.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee formed a sub- committee to look into the matter after the present government took office.
Jahangirnagar University’s Vice Chancellor Prof Anwar Hossain, also a victim of the 2007 incident, said he was ‘disheartened’ as the committee recommendations were yet to be implemented.
Source: Bd news24
The present PM has unimaginable shrewdness and capability to swallow her own words. After the CTG took power, she said it was the fruit of their ‘movement’. When the CTG was about to go, she declared her govt would accord approval to all what the CTG had done. Who knows the student-military hassle was also a drama to shorten the rule of Uddins? And that the CTG was AL’s own brainchild is very much proved by the above news report. So the question is: does anyone want to kill his/her own ‘child’?