Authorities launched nationwide crackdown against suspected militants
Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of brutal killings that have spiked in recent weeks, in which religious minorities, secular thinkers, bloggers and liberal activists were targeted. These killings sent shockwaves across the country. More than seven prominent secular bloggers been killed for having their secular and liberal views. They were clearly targeted for their ideas and views.
In recent few weeks liberal activists and members of the Hindu religious minority were also killed. Bangladesh was used to consider as much more tolerant and liberal society compare to Pakistan and some other Muslim majority countries. But in last one decade, Bangladesh has seen an unprecedented rise in Islamic militancy and religious extremism. There was a mushroom growth of different Islamic militant organisations in the country under the coalition government of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamat-e-Islami (JI) in early 2000.
After these gruesome killings, the Prime Minister Hasina Wajid of Awami League has ordered a nationwide crackdown against these militant organisations and suspected criminals. The prime minister vowed to catch each and every killer. The police have arrested more than 3,000 people in a sweeping crackdown in last 24 hours. The police detained 37 suspected Islamist militants and hundreds of potential criminals who previously had warrants out against them, police said.
“The militants included 27 members of Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB),” police told AFP. The JMB is one of the main domestic militant outfits blamed by the government, which rejects claims from Daesh group and a South Asian branch of Al-Qaeda that they are behind the killings.
The Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told a meeting of her ruling Awami League party Saturday that police would stamp out the violence. “It may take time, but God willing, we will be able to bring them under control,” Hasina told a meeting of her ruling Awami League party on Saturday. “Where will the criminals hide? Each and every killer will be brought to book as we did after the 2015 mayhem,” she said, referring to a deadly transport blockade last year organized by opposition parties.
However, Bangladesh opposition parties immediately accused the police of using the crackdown to suppress political dissent.
“Hundreds of opposition activists have been arrested in the police drive,” Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secretary general Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told AFP.
“In the name of the crackdown against Islamist militants, many ordinary and innocent people are being detained.”
Hasina has accused the BNP and the country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, of orchestrating the attacks after they failed to topple the government in last year’s transport blockade.
Police detained some 350 people in the country’s second-largest city of Chittagong and its surrounding areas.
They include one suspect in the murder of Mahmuda Begum, the wife of a top anti-terror police officer who was fatally stabbed and shot last weekend.
Her husband had led several high-profile operations against the JMB in Chittagong and her killing prompted the police to vow to catch her killers.
“We suspect Shahjahan Robin as the prime offender in the murder of (anti-terror officer) Babul Akter’s wife,” Chittagong police chief Iqbal Bahar told AFP.
In recent days an elderly Hindu priest was found nearly decapitated in a rice field, while a Christian grocer was hacked to death near a church, with Daesh group claiming responsibility for the killings.
A Hindu monastery worker was found hacked to death Friday in the northwestern district of Pabna.
Police have targeted domestic militant outfits, however, specifically the JMB, with five members of the group shot dead in gun battles this week.
Nine members of the JMB were arrested in Rajshahi, Shariful Islam, a police inspector in the northwestern district said Saturday.
Several attacks have occurred in the district including the killing of a liberal professor in April.
As well as the arrests, police said they had seized nearly 1,000 motorcycles across the country.
Motorbikes have been used in many of the attacks, with the government recently announcing a ban on motorcyclists carrying more than one passenger.
The use of force alone is not going to end this madness on the name of religion. It is important to launch a political movement against these militant religious extremist groups and their ideology. Working class has to play a key role in this movement. A mass movement of the working masses can defeat this reactionary ideology and thoughts. It is time for the working masses to rise and get rid of religious extremism, militancy, crony capitalism, neoliberal economic policies and free market economy to bring peace, prosperity and stability in the country.