Dhaka, July 19 (IANS) Bangladesh’s Awami League issued a scathing condemnation of what it called a “brutal and deadly crackdown” on unarmed civilians in Gopalganj district. The party blamed the Yunus-led regime, accusing it of authorising state forces to “exterminate” citizens who refused to support activists of the Yunus-backed National Citizens Party (NCP).

Local media reported that the curfew was announced on Wednesday, allegedly after clashes broke out between protestors and law enforcement agencies.

The violent crackdown on the protestors reportedly left four people dead and more than 50 injured, as thousands rallied in Gopalganj on Wednesday against the “state-sponsored repression” unleashed by the interim government under Muhammad Yunus.

The Gopalganj Deputy Commissioner (DC) Muhammad Kamruzzaman on Friday announced that the curfew imposed would remain in effect until Saturday morning.

“We condemn that after imposing curfew for days and empowered with blanket impunity, members of Bangladesh armed forces and other law enforcement agencies have been executing deadly crackdown at the dead of the night against unarmed citizens in Gopalganj, marking another blatant abuse of state machinery to terrorise and quash public outburst against Yunus’s divisive path, mob rule and the effort to erase the founding the principles of the country that includes secularism and pluralism,” read a statement issued by the Awami League.

“We assert in compliance with authorization by Yunus regime to exterminate citizens in Gopalganj simply because they rejected Yunus backed kings party activists from National Citizens Party, the law enforcement machinery carrying out block raids, torturing and arbitrarily arresting hundreds of unarmed citizens from their houses throughout the night, flaunting every single facets of human rights,” the statement added.

The Awami League stressed that even forty-eight hours elapsed but no top official of the Yunus led interim government “extended any help to the family members of victims and these terrified family members were not allowed to file a single case in connection with the extrajudicial killing spree executed by security apparatus, a glaring testament that the regime brazenly abusing state machineries to deny justice to the victims and cover up the use of lethal weapons and live bullets by security apparatus on citizens to suppress a spontaneous movement against the regime.”

The party slammed the effort by “the press wing on behalf of the chief advisor to slap the blame on the families of the victims who were shot fatally by the law enforcement over their burial without an autopsy.”

The Awami League urged the global community to consider statements of family members of victims and witnesses, already available on social media and mainstream media, that revealed “hospital authorities and cops denied the families their right to conduct autopsies and government authorities refused issuing death certificates to the victims died of bullet wounds fired by law enforcement.”

“We reiterate that immediately after the killing spree, the chief advisor commended law enforcement for these gruesome rights abuses and the veiled authorization of Youth and Sports advisor from the police control room to decimate anyone associated with Awami League, all are tantamount to stage a farcical trial process and embolden the perpetrators with impunity,” the party emphasised.

The Awami League further reaffirmed that “people are scared of law enforcement machinery as the regime has turned the security apparatus into a weapon against dissenters emboldened by total lack of accountability and a deafening global silence.”

–IANS

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