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Student vandalism at trade fair and RUET

Authorities must come down hard on unruly young
30 January 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
THE vandalism which a group of students resorted to at the International Trade Fair in Dhaka on Friday puts all of us to shame. Our embarrassment only gets deeper when we note that at the Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology, students engaged in running battles with the police and bus workers and damaged some administrative offices of RUET. Indeed, incidents of students all too often and on the flimsiest of excuses taking the law in their hands appear to have become the norm, with the authorities clearly proving incapable of coming down on these unruly elements with a firm hand. Such inaction has sent out a very wrong message to people within and outside the country, which is that the unruly young can and do get away with their acts. In the end, it is the image of the larger body of peace-loving, classroom-oriented students that suffers because of the riotous ones in their midst. What happened at the trade fair simply boggles the mind. Cadres of the Chhatra League and students of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University went on a rampage on the premises of the fair and ended up vandalising as many as a hundred cars belonging to visitors to the trade fair. In a manner that causes every citizen to go red in the face, they even went around looting valuables from the stalls set up at the fair. And all of this hooliganism took place because the police had arrested some young men on charges of harassing young women visitors at the fair and trying to take away goods from the stalls without paying. That is not the sort of culture anyone can imagine students upholding before the world. Sadly enough, though, the impunity with which students have been going around waging street battles, vandalising vehicles and shops, intimidating citizens and putting up barricades on the roads has increasingly been causing despair all around. These students or the likes of them have been acting like desperadoes, much to the shame of the nation. The important question now is what must be done to ensure that such student violence does not recur. Even more important is whether the authorities are prepared and ready to bring such violent elements to heel. In the more than one year since the present government came to office, we have heard the functionaries of the state proclaim more than once their determination to crack down on student violence irrespective of the political affiliation of those involved in such violence. Unfortunately, such determination has not been matched by meaningful action. What has happened is a platitudinous exhortation to the young to desist from violence. Obviously, many of the young have not taken such exhortations seriously. But now the time has come for everyone, beginning at the level of the government, to take such mindless violence seriously. If citizens cannot go to fairs with their families for fear of possible violence, if firms and stall owners are afraid that their goods will be looted by unruly gangs of the young, it is a sad reflection on us as a whole. At a time when we are trying to create a better image for ourselves through democracy and an exercise of the rule of law, the sight of students going down to acts of low criminality causes a blot on our image before the rest of the world. Let the authorities note this; and then let them act before it is too late. A country where students ignore the classroom in favour of the streets is a dangerous place.

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