AS the government suffers from remorse as to who are those people actually terrorizing the nation, frequent travel alerts by some nations are also causing harm to the the country. As it appears the UK government on Saturday issued renewed travel alert for its citizen on their visit to Bangladesh. The alert came after the attack on the Shiite mosque in Bogra in which the Muazzen was killed and three others were injured while the Islamic State (IS) claimed their militants have carried out the attack.
Earlier Australia renewed its travel alert in Friday — may be for the third or fourth time — asking development volunteers to leave the country by December 31 as they fear more such attacks and its citizens must keep out to safety. The US government has also alerted citizens last week anticipating more attacks.
The situation is only worsening when the western nations are outwardly contributing to further worsen it by issuing frequent travel alerts. News reports on Sunday quoted Food Minister Qamrul Islam as saying that ‘the US is the creator of the IS. The US is the original creator of militants. The US is trying to enter Bangladesh, saying militancy exists here.” Other senior government leaders have also criticized the western nations and their envoys in Dhaka for easy criticism of some unfortunate killings although such killings also often take place in their countries. The difference is that they down play it as the work of ‘mentally deranged’ people while the killers in Bangladesh are terrorists. Killings are killings — no matter terrorists do this or mentally deranged ones do that. But the way the Western nations are using the spread of hostilities in Bangladesh to establish the presence of IS is only disproportionately destroying our image without effectively helping us to overcome it.
We are not in unison with the Food Minister who wants to pass blame on the US for attempting to bring the IS in Bangladesh. There is no doubt that the US and some others were directly responsible for the creation of IS in Iraq and Syria by pushing an unjust war on their countries. They are now hitting back growing up as a brutal, ruthless force. But when the Minister says the US is trying to enter Bangladesh using the IS militants, what hits anybody’s mind is that why the government has created the vulnerability by destroying the democratic process and dividing the nation. Whether the IS is here or not, somebody is terrorizing the nation and the absence of democratic space to the people is giving the enemies the scope to exploit the situation.
In our view, the West can help us by working to hold free election and not by harming the country’s image with frequent travel alerts.
