Why use force on peaceful political programme?

The Daily Star  February 15, 2021

Police should refine its method of crowd management

We wonder if the clash between the police and BNP supporters in front of the Jatiya Press Club on Saturday could have been avoided; or was is inevitable. As it is, holding of opposition programmes has become increasingly difficult by the day. It is disturbing to see almost every time that whenever a meeting is organised by an opposition political party, the BNP in particular, or a rally held by a private organisation ventilating its grievances or demanding some action from the administration, it meets the predictable inevitability. Either that event is not allowed to be held or disrupted by the police on some flimsy ground. The government’s much vaunted claim of the onward march of democracy flies in the face of such hard, and sometimes ham handed, action by the police. BNP’s meeting to protest government’s mulling revocation of late President Zia’s gallantry award, regrettably, met the same fate as its previous meetings.

Reportedly, the assembly, which was held opposite the Press Club, a common venue for such meets, was peaceful. According to the police, the melee started when the organisers were asked to vacate one side of the road to allow traffic to pass through which, according to the police, was not complied with and thus the police baton charged on the assembly.

We believe, and have been calling on all concerned to accept our position, that no political assembly or rally of any kind, and by any entity, should be held in such locations that disrupts the normal flow of traffic, or causes inconvenience to the public. But such disruption of traffic as yesterday’s was not new. Nonetheless, looking at TV footage, one is constrained to suggest that the use of force by the police was grossly disproportionate.  We believe that the police needs to refine and rewrite its crowd control method. It should realise that we are not living in the colonial or Pakistan period, where the public had been looked upon inimically. It’s not so any more. Political programmes may be anti- government, which is not illegal, and not anti-state. And the police should understand that it is as important to know when to withhold precipitate action as it’s to engage in it.