Murder in the name of politics

At 4 am on Tuesday, a petrol bomb, hurled from a safe distance by unidentified attackers, at a bus on the highway in Comilla took the lives of seven unsuspecting civilians, including women and children, and injured another 20. It is feared that the death toll will increase as some of the wounded are in critical conditions. We condemn these murders in the name of waging a movement in no uncertain terms and demand that the perpetrators and masterminds of this violence be arrested and given exemplary punishment.

At least 50 people have been killed since Jan 5 to Feb 3, 27 of whom were killed in arson attacks. The despicable politics of killing citizens have gone on for too long, and despite repeated calls for denunciation of such vicious political programmes, we see no indication of abatement of wanton death and violence.

Let us not reduce the lives of people to mere statistics to fuel our rhetoric, or to collateral damage to further our movement; let us treat them, in death, with the dignity they deserved in life, and ensure that such deaths are not repeated again.

The current political situation is unhealthy, unsustainable and totally unacceptable. No people of a country should be made to suffer in such a way to serve the selfish political agendas of its political parties. We reiterate our call to the BNP-alliance to abandon violence in the name of politics, and urge the government to take steps that will address, rather than fuel, the underlying problem.