Staff Reporter :
The family members, relatives and well-wishers are now fade-up with the law enforcing agencies as they could not get any clue about their nears-one who were allegedly picked up by plain-clothes men identifying themselves as law enforcers.
The victims’ relatives have sought the whereabouts of the ‘enforced missing men’ to quit the linger painful awaiting.
They expressed their anger over the role of the law enforcing agencies as they failed to trace the clues of the dozen of enforced victims after passing several years.
The family members also showed helplessness as neither government nor law enforcers heed their repeated pleas to find out their relatives or produce them in country’s court as per law.
They made the demands in a discussion program on the occasion of the ‘International Day of the Victims of Enforced’ arranged by “Mayer Daak’ (Mothers’ Call) organisation held at the Jatiya Press Club in the city on Friday morning.
With the presence of the victims’ relatives, including parents, children and wives, the Press Club had already turned heavy with cries of the relatives of some victims. After some time, they began consoling each other.
The organiser of Mayer Daak, mother of Sajedul Islam Suman, a BNP man, who was picked up in 2013, is now bed-ridden due to old age complications, Suman’s sister Marufa Islam Ferdausi said. All these years, she has been waiting and fighting to bring her son back, but it is now uncertain whether she will ever be able to see her son again, Marufa said.
She called upon the authorities concerned to bring her brother back so that her mother can see him one more time.
Saleha Begum, mother of Mozammel Hosen Topu, a BCL activist who has been missing for more than four years, said that many mothers in the country are passing painful days.
Such a situation cannot go on in an independent country, she said.
Ruma Begum, wife of enforced disappearance victim Mofizul Islam Rashed, who went missing from Mirpur-1 area on April 4, 2013, tried to hold back her tears during programme, said “We want to know the whereabouts the missing men.”
“My son is innocent. If he did anything wrong, he should be punished under the law. My question is what kind of a country is this where people are killed and their whereabouts remain unknown?”
Apart from the family members of those disappeared, eminent citizens and rights activists, including Nagarik Oikya Convenor Mahmudur Rahman Manna, Ganosasthyo Kendra Trustee Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury, Zonayed Saki, and Asif Nazrul, among others, were present at the programme.
Jharna Khanam, wife of another victim, KM Shamim Akter, said, “We are angry and frustrated … we, as a member of a victim’s family, want the authorities to make sure not a single individual goes missing.”
“We want our relatives back. If you have killed them, admit it. If you have courage, you admit that you have killed our brothers, husbands, and children …. We can bear it,” Jharna said.
“I want to ask the Investigation Officer what has he found. Can you say whether Shamim is still alive?” she asked.
A little girl, Aroya, was one of the participants in the program, said that she was two years old when her father disappeared. Now she is six. She still stares at her father’s photo, tearfully when will he come home.
In a crowded room at the Jatiya Press Club, eight-year old Adiba Islam Hridi cried softly while sitting on her mother’s lap.
“Please give my father back to me. I don’t feel good without him,” Hridi said in a barely audible voice, cracked with emotion.
“Every year we come to this meeting and see the same dejected faces. But our calls for justice do not reach the people in power,” said Nagorik Oikya Convenor Mahmudur Rahman Manna.
“We demand forming of an Independent Commission to investigate the incidents of disappearances and to bring back the victims,” said Manna.
Nagorik Oikya Convener, said, “I feel extremely helpless when I see children holding the photographs of their fathers and pleading for their safe return.”
“The incident of enforced disappearance happens for political reasons,” he said.
“The next year is the birth centenary of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The best gift on such occasion to these families would be bringing their loved ones back to them,” Zafrullah said, urging the Prime Minister to take actions in this regard.
Dhaka University Professor Asif Nazrul said that as long the enforced disappearance would continue, the protest against it would also continue.
Zonayed Saki, Chief Coordinator of the Central Executive Committee of Ganosamhati Andolon, said that the government had turned the state into a “monstrous one”.
According to Rights Body Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), as many as 544 people have allegedly fallen victims to enforced disappearance between 2010 and July 2018 in Bangladesh and over 300 of them are still missing.
