It is unfortunate that the government is advised to use violence against peaceful protest of our young boys and girls showing how things could be done honestly and nicely for road safety and clean roads. They were checking driving licence and fitness papers of vehicles politely but exposing at the same time how important persons without such documents use their cars. The protesting students also carried garbage themselves as an example for clean roads. They earned praise for their honest intentions to do good for the country.
It has to be admitted that there are elements in the government who are anxious to show involvement of others to jumpstart violence against our young children. It has been their normal tactics to subvert any genuine demand fearing a threat to the government and their vested interest.
Police went into action from Saturday and continued yesterday in the city giving cover to ruling party activists to attack the students at several city points where they were holding peaceful gathering. The party activists first started attack on students on Saturday evening at Jhigatola; which then spread to around Awami League Dhanmondi office. The protesting students came to know that two of their girl students were detained in the Awami League office and as they gathered there they faced attacks on them. Many were seriously wounded including newsmen and admitted to hospital for treatment. But they were not able to trace the missing ones.
Students from Dhaka University, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka Medical College and other city colleges joined the young students as the news spread in social media and laid siege on Awami League office to rescue the victims.
But AL general secretary Obaidul Qadir blamed the siege as an attack on the party office by unruly people from BNP-Jamaat who are trying to misdirect the movement.
Though the DMP senior officials had earlier said they support the demand of the students and would not harm them, but now they are seen facilitating attacks on the students to the surprise of the nation.
Students have no alternative to protest in the streets. Boys are killed on roads and even some of them being abducted to find their bodies later abandoned in water bodies. Girls are raped and sexually harassed at will by criminals. In some cases bus drivers and helpers were directly involved in raping girls. Thus the transport system has become an unruly shelter for all sorts of crime and corruption.
At least four students including girl students were killed in road accident in the past few days. The hefty list of killing; particularly young schoolboys and girls in road accidents and sexual assault clearly tells the reasons why the students have taken to the streets in their desperate bid to secure change in the road transport system and the overall system of governance. That is why they are demanding justice in a broad sense. They revealed that the government does not care for lives of others.
People had expected the government would take the children’s case positively to bring change in the transport system now being held hostage by big transport syndicates of owners and workers. It is known to everybody the bus owners and workers are fully under the control of Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan.
It is no wonder that the students in the streets have been demanding the resignation of the minister in a very angry voice. But the government is not prepared to show any visible action by asking the minister to resign.
It appears the government is not serious to meet the students demand; which may hurt the interest of the transport syndicates. (In yesterday’s commentary by Mainul Hosein in first paragraph of page 2, the two sentences published in broken form should be read as:
The situation is explosive and the government, not the police must deal with the children in the streets. Now is not the time for power politics.)
