Editorial
Laying siege on streets at will
Do protests have to be so public-unfriendly?
The backlash of Karail slum evictions on Wednesday led up to a severe four-hour-long traffic congestion across a large swathe of the city on the following day. As if that was not enough of immobility and hardship for city dwellers at peak hours of public movement, another three-hour blockade was staged on the busy Shahbagh intersection by DU students in protest against reported repression of minorities in Satkhira.
A total of a seven-hour traffic congestion actually meant nearly 10 hours of agonising experience for school-going children, elderly people, office-goers, medicare seekers, and business people caught up in the tailspins.
It is only after higher authorities gave assurance to the slum-dwellers that their problems will be taken up and discussed that they ended their road blockade at 12pm. Similarly the agitating students withdrew their blockade following home ministry's assurances of a probe into the alleged incident in Satkhira.
On the authorities' side we wonder what stopped them from giving the assurances at the very initial stages of the slum-dwellers' organising the blockade or the university students mounting a protest to the point of calling a halt to vehicular traffic movement. Clearly, the authorities allowed sufficient latitude for the traffic congestion to spread as though in a rapid fire fashion. They were seen to be reactive rather than being proactive with sufficient prior information to prevent the snowballing of theT incidents. Thankfully there were no reports of car bashing or destruction of public property, which is a hopeful sign that can be built up on by timely engaging the protesters in a dialogue with a body of people in authority.
As for the protesters, why must they take their wrath out on people who had nothing to do with the root causes of the troubles in the first place? There are peaceful public- friendly options to have grievances mitigated without creating anarchy.
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