The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, several other political parties and student bodies on Monday condemned the attack on the Bangladesh mission in Agartala of India and West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s remarks.
Urging Mamata to immediately withdraw her statement where she called for sending United Nations peacekeeping mission to Bangladesh, the BNP in a statement later in the evening said that Mamata Banerjee’s remark was a threat to the Bangladesh’s independence and sovereignty.
‘In some newspapers this morning, we saw the statement of the chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal about Bangladesh. The statement she [Mamata] made about sending peacekeepers to Bangladesh… is a threat to the independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh and we think that the statement reflects to some extent the views of the leadership,’ BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said on behalf of the party.
‘I think that West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee should immediately withdraw this statement. She should not even entertain such thoughts. Because the people of Bangladesh gained independence through the War of Independence, and recently through a revolution they regained democracy…The people of this country will stand against such a conspiracy at any cost,’ he said.
While addressing the West Bengal Assembly on Monday, Mamata called for the deployment of UN peacekeepers and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s personal intervention to secure the safety of religious minorities in Bangladesh.
Fakhrul said that the false stories were being circulated and published in the Indian media outlets about the deterioration of communal harmony in Bangladesh were in no way acceptable.
‘The very unfortunate things that are being said about Bangladesh, and the new conspiracy that has recently started in Bangladesh regarding ISKCON [International Society for Krishna Consciousness in Bangladesh] will never be accepted by the people of Bangladesh,’ he said.
A group of protestors demonstrating near the Bangladesh Assistant High Commission broke through the police cordon and barged into the office premises in Agartala of India.
India has, meanwhile, expressed regrets over the breach of the Bangladesh mission premises in Tripura’s Agartala, reports The Week.
Students of Dhaka University, Jahangirnagar University and others brought out processions on their campuses and other places protesting at the Mamata’s remarks and attack on Bangladeshi mission in Agartala.
A group of students, on the other hand, under the banner of the Student Movement Against Discrimination brought out a procession on the Dhaka University campus while Gono Odhikar Parishad brought out a separate procession in Bijoynagar area in the capital protesting at the attack on Bangladesh mission in Agartala.
A group of Jahangirnagar University students brought out a torch procession on the campus on Monday evening, protesting at the attack on Bangladesh mission, New Age correspondent at the University reported.
Under the banner of Movement to Protect the Mass Uprising, students staged the protest programme on the campus.
The march, which began in the Battala area at about 9:00pm, drew more than a hundred participants who carried torches and raised slogans against the attack and assault on Bangladeshi flag.
Besides, in a statement, Revolutionary Workers Party general secretary Saiful Huq condemned the attack in Agartala and the activities of Hindutvadi extremists on the Benapole border are extremely provocative.
He also said that Mamata Banerjee’s statement was part of supporting international intervention in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir in a statement condemned and protested at the attack.
NEW AGE