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Editorial

Terror on RU campus

Perpetrators of the barbaric act should be brought to book
10 February 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
The murder of a Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) activist of Rajshahi University Faruk Hossain allegedly by the cadres of Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS) points to how the old spectre of violence is reappearing with a tendon-cutting brutality dimension. The Rajshahi University (RU) has been the scene of a gruesome killing and ensuing mayhem where along with the murdered BCL worker, 100 others were also injured, four of them victims of severed tendons. We are profoundly outraged and shocked at the loss of life and brutalisation of the campus. The police, whom the RU proctor blamed for their failure to prevent the violence from coming to a head, have admitted to their helplessness in the face of the organised onslaught by the Shibir cadres. The powerlessness of the police to tackle the situation does only expose the vulnerability of the university, a premier educational institution of the country, to the forces of violence. And if the police prove to be of little help, then one can hardly expect of the university administration to do much to maintain order and a congenial atmosphere on the campus. However, one would still like to see the report of the RU body to probe the incident leading to the rampage and murder. In the police action that followed, members of Shibir cadres of the university were reportedly arrested. Meanwhile, the RU violence has also had its backlash from the angry student community in different parts of the country. The usual way to approach the issue is from the law and order angle and that option is also taken when things prove unmanageable and as a last resort. But we basically believe the problem has intrinsic political connotation, which will have to be resolved politically. The sporadic eruptions of violence on the RU and other campuses by student cadres of different parties call for doing more than just uttering words of assurances by the ruling and other political parties that these would be dealt with regardless of political affiliations of the perpetrators, while the other political parties looking the other way. If they wash their hands of the situation obtaining, it can only snowball. In the RU case, for example, it is time their parent political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, play their sobering influences in reining in their student front.

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