M. Shahidul Islam in Toronto
Battered by an orgy of persistent persecutions that had resulted 100s of deaths and maiming, and over 35,000 incarceration of workers and leaders in the last two years alone, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is changing is track and building a strong overseas operation to keep the party perky in order to direct future movements for holding an inclusive election from safe havens; away from the vicious paws of a repressive regime that the ruling AL has proved to be.
In recent weeks, the bruised party has reorganized its operations with formation of new committees in the UK and Canada while efforts are on to do the same in the USA. “This new phase of BNP’s politics is different and it has been forced upon us by a number of reasons,” says Shamsul Muktadir, one of the front ranking overseas BNP organizers living in Canada.
Move to unite nationalist forces
Muktadir says rampant persecutions of party leaders and workers aside, efforts are on to convict the party chairperson and the party’s senior vice chairman, Tarek Zia, who has been physically debilitated by torture while being in Bangladesh and, has been living in exile in the UK for years now. “The BNP will be destroyed soon unless we prop it from without, “Muktadir insists.
According to another BNP leader of national repute and stature, “A consensus has emerged that the party must embrace its estranged leaders and other nationalist forces, the persecuted intellectuals and all other patriotic elements at home and abroad, to create international pressure for holding a credible and inclusive general election by early 2016.” The leader said he’s being looked for by Bangladesh police and refused to be identified.
The spurt of such new activism abroad follows the commemoration of President Zia’s 34 death anniversary in Toronto under the guidance of Rezaul Karim Talukder, who had served the BNP in the 1980s as one of the leading organizers of the Nationalist Cultural Forum (JSS).
For months now, Talukder and his associates have been lobbying with the Bangladesh Caucus of the Canadian parliamentarians to exert what they call ‘soft power’ on the incumbent Bangladesh regime to ensure that the country gets back its deserved participatory democratic system sooner to overcome the stigma of the January 2014 farce election which was boycotted by most major political parties.
Meanwhile, in New York City, this correspondent witnessed during a recent trip a flurry of other civilsociety activism in concert with leading Bangladeshi academicians who believe restoration of credible democracy in Bangladesh brooks no further delay.
Mounting pressures for polls
“The Obama administration and the US Congress are being approached aggressively by a group of American Bangladeshis to exert simultaneous pressure on both Delhi and Dhaka to stop persecution of opposition leaders in Bangladesh and to hold a general election sooner,” said a New York based senior journalist who too had fled Bangladesh under persecution for being critical of the incumbent AL regime.
“Our main focus is to convince global political and business leaders that collaborations with a regime that is not truly representative of the people and is too repressive against political dissents is in discord with civilized nations’ laws and other international guidelines,” said Muktadir, who’s an upstart scholar with a post graduate degree in international relations and a mint of diplomatic expertise earned while working for foreign diplomatic missions and other international organizations in Bangladesh and abroad.
When contacted, a reliable source within the BNP said, insisting on anonymity, “We’re mobilizing at home and abroad. The drought of democracy must be overcome by having the much needed rainfall of an election that must be truly reflective of public opinion, and, will end the existing political deadlock crippling Bangladesh within and destroying its image abroad.”
A Toronto-based local BNP leader said, “We’re collecting donations from party loyalists and other patriotic forces to make this global movement for restoration of democracy in Bangladesh a success.”
Source: Weekly Holiday
