Given the antecedents of a section of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) activists—-who in the past decades have committed umpteen crimes often with impunity—-the reprehensible incident of their assault on agitating teachers including Prof Yasmeen Haque, wife of Computer Science and Engineering teacher and noted writer Prof Muhammed Iqbal of the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) on its campus in Sylhet may not surprise people. A section of teachers, under the banner of Mahan Muktijuddher Chetonay Udbuddho Shikkhak Parishad, have been demanding removal of the VC since April 12 for his alleged irregularities and misbehaviour with the teachers.
Although Prof. Iqbal did not join the demonstration, he ‘empathised’ with the agitating teachers. He said, “I fully support the reason why they are demonstrating. I had stopped working with this vice chancellor two months after he joined. That’s because I have seen that he lies.” Reacting to the scuffle, Iqbal said, “Today was a new experience for me. I never imagined I would have to see something like this in my life”.
Giving due recognition to the BCL for its pre-Independence role as a major complementary social force acting hand in glove with the Awami League (AL) which launched and spearheaded the Six-point Programme and finally led our Liberation War, the BCL started degenerating since 1972. The conduct of the BCL—-the student wing of the ruling AL—- after the country’s independence began to be condemned for its complicity in various unlawful activities including violence.
Anyone searching the newspaper archives of the last two decades will find news reports about the BCL boys involved in moneymaking enterprises like “tender business” for government work contracts, regular extortion from businessmen, intra-BCL gun battles for establishing supremacy ending in murders on various campuses, and unprovoked armed attacks as an auxiliary force on opposition BNP’s rallies side by side with the policemen.
The gruesome murder of Biswajit in the capital will never be forgotten. Dhaka city has not witnessed a similar grotesque political murder of an absolutely apolitical innocent young man in broad daylight by a group of varsity students. People still convulse and shudder at the horrifying slaughter of Biswajit Kumar Das, son of Ananta Kumar Das. Activists of the Jagannath University (JnU) unit of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) hacked to death Biswajit Das at Bahadur Shah Park area in Old Dhaka on 9 December 2012. This is why people surreptitiously call them gangsters, hooligans, goons and so forth.
Here we recall the 13 July 2013 pictorial news report about our Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid, an affable gentleman, shedding tears on seeing the devastated condition of the room he used to stay in while he was a student at MC College in Sylhet. Some 42 rooms of the dormitory were burnt down after BCL activists set the college’s hostel afire following a clash with rival Shibir men on July 8. Though he said that none of the offenders (in his words “they are not even human beings”) would be spared under any circumstances, and the vandals are not difficult to identify, the culprits were untraced! People understand his helplessness: these criminals have connections with very powerful circles.
Source: Weekly Holiday