With today’s sunrise, the nation will embrace a new day of the New Year that clearly marks a new beginning. The year 2017 is not only new, the hopes of the nation are also new and their aspirations are new too!
Although the government had taken dozens of multi-billion taka development projects to obtain the mid-income country’s status by 2021, the year 2016 would be marked in the history mainly for the “extreme militant uprising”.
The nation was thunderstruck seeing the ferocity of Islamist militants when 22 persons, including foreign nationals and police were slaughtered and gunned down at Holey Artisan Bakery in the city’s Gulshan diplomatic enclave on July 1. The incident took place as a continuity of several other terror attacks on the individuals – minority preachers, bloggers, freethinkers and foreign nationals. In fact, the chronic terror syndrome is not ended yet. And keeping possible terror threat under active consideration, Dhaka has been put under tight security for New Year’s Eve where the 31st night was celebrated in an unprecedented protective arrangement.
This year, the citizens of Dhaka took preparations to welcome the New Year in a suffocative circumstance when all forms of outdoor gatherings and celebrations had been prohibited from dusk on December 31. Except a few, most of the posh hotels and restaurants were discouraged to arrange any party without police clearance and all bars have been directed to keep shut.
Against this backdrop, the foreign diplomats and other officials staying in Dhaka have been advised by their concerned missions and organizations to return home by 8:00pm and arrange indoor parties to celebrate 31st night and welcome the New Year.
Some 10,000 members of law enforcement agencies, including RAB, equipped with firearms have been deployed at check-posts on different strategic points in Dhaka to conduct stringent checking of vehicles, suspicious persons as well tackling unruly mobs. The scenario was reportedly same in other major towns and cities, including port city Chittagong.
Apart from militancy issue, the overall law and order situation was not so good in many areas in the previous year. Bangladesh Hundu Mohajote on Friday claimed that 98 people of Hindu community were reportedly killed and 357 others were injured from January 1 to December 29 last year. Several hundred temples and houses of Hindu minorities were torched and vandalized at that time.
Another organization claimed that 1240 workers were killed and 544 received injuries which have apparently reflected sorrow state of workers in the mills and factories.
The incident of murders, forced disappearances, kidnappings and other crimes were numerous and in most cases the ruling Awami League leaders had played a key role with the alleged cooperation of law enforcement agencies.
Despite many odds, the success of law enforcement agencies in curbing militancy was remarkable during the aforesaid period. Most of the top ranking militant leaders, including Tamim Chowdhury, were killed in counter attacks. The rest are on the run.
In diplomatic sector, the government had passed a busy time last year to keep a balanced relation among the global and regional superpowers. It played Indian card with one hand and China card with another. Besides, the relation with Washington and Moscow was also very tactful.
But Dhaka failed to ink Teesta Water Treaty with India due to noncooperation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
In education sector, the last year had witnessed continuous question paper leakage, fraud admission in different educational institutions, high-level controversy over PSC and JSC exams, corruption in private varsities and others. The bright side of education sector – distributing free books to junior students – also faced difficulties due to huge mismanagement.
The economic sector had witnessed a tough time when unknown hackers in the history’s biggest bank heist tried to swindle $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank accounts with Federal Reserve Bank of New York using cyber technology and applying forged commands through Swift Messaging system.
The hackers, however, managed to siphon off $81 million to an account in the Philippines using five messages. Besides, $20 million were moved to Sri Lanka through a different command. Coincidentally, the Sri Lankan transfer was stopped. But the Philippines transfer was successful. And the money made its way to casinos after conversion into the local currency.
In the field of politics, the country passed a ‘cool time’ last year as there was no ‘strong enough’ political party to challenge the Awami League. The main opposition BNP ran their activities in unplanned and undisciplined ways. In this circumstance, all the parties, especially the Awami League, had spent most of time to strengthen their organizations.
But the Election Commission headed by Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad was criticized sharply for its alleged partisan role and controversial decisions, including running union, upazila and zila parishad elections, where BNP-led opposition alliance did not take part. The local body elections were marked with widespread violence by the ruling party men.
Mainly for terror issue, the sports sector had to face obstacles in the international arena last year when the foreign teams expressed inability to visit Bangladesh. Especially in the cricket, Bangladesh had to prove its anti-terror capability rather winning the game.
The women players, athletes and swimmers, however, had shown an extraordinary performance last year in different categories. Of them, Mahfuza Khatun Shila and Mabia Akter won gold medals in swimming and weight lifting in the South Asia Games. Not only that, the women teams also got silver medals in kabadi, handball wresting and shooting. Besides, the Bangladeshi team clinched top place in AFC U-16 women championship.
