Awami League members, minorities under attack?

By Our Special Correspondent

DHAKA, OCT. 13. Authorities are yet to take steps to protect political rivals of the ruling BNP coalition and minorities who are reportedly being subjected to persecution by hoodlums believed to belong to the ruling coalition.

Leading newspapers said the attack on minority communities and members of the Awami League over the last 10 days, described as ``extensive and brutal'', was launched by armed gangs of the BNP and its allies - the fundamentalist Jamaat-E- Islami and Islami Oikya Jote. The caretaker Government, which ended its nearly three-month tenure, said the police had investigated 58 such incidents in 25 districts last week. The outgoing administration of Justice Latifur Rahman, which has been blamed by the Awami League for ``masterminding'' the win of the BNP-led alliance ``under a blue print'', was also accused by leading organisations of the ``unpardonable offence'' of failing to protecting minorities and political opponents.

The leading Bangladesh daily, Prothom Alo, claimed on Wednesday that many minority members had already fled to India as they felt scared to return to their homes which were looted. Their crime: casting their vote for the Awami League. The popular daily said, ``Many minority people who are now assembled in the bordering villages from the far-flung areas of Dinajpur, Rangpur, Pabna, Bogra and other areas have decided to leave for India.'' The head of the European Commission delegation in Dhaka, Mr. Antonio De Souza Manezes, has appealed to the new Government to take immediate measures to stop the attack on minorities and maintain law and order.

A number of BNP leaders, many of whom were inducted as Ministers of the Begum Khaleda Zia-led Government on Wednesday, had also requested the interim Government to take appropriate action against such violence. But newspapers here alleged that the police and other law-enforcement agencies chose not to taken any action. In the southern region where the attack on Awami League supporters and minorities was reportedly extensive, more than 15,000 people have taken shelter in Gopalgonj, the home district of Sheikh Hasina. ``They are living under the open sky for the last several days and being fed by opening gruel kitchens,'' said Bhorer Kagoj, a daily. It also detailed how these people faced atrocities by rowdy elements soon after the poll results were announced. Even the minorities who voted for the BNP candidates were not spared, the daily said.

The Ghatak-Dalal Nirmul Committee, which has been campaigning for the trial of the ``war criminals'' of 1971, alleged at a meeting here on Sunday that the caretaker government had ``handed over Bangladesh to the `Rajakars' in a planned way''. The Rajakars and Al Badars were the pro-Pakistani local outfits created by the Pakistan Occupation Army during Bangladesh's liberation war. Maulana Matiur Rahman Nizami and Mr. Ali Ahsan Mujaheed, president and secretary-general of Jamaat-E-Islami, who are Ministers in the Begum Khaleda Zia Government, are treated as ``war criminals''.

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Section  : International
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