Govt must control its armed student cadres
Photo: STAR
Thanks to adequate modern media presence at Rajshahi University campus that we could see the recent fighting between Shibir and BCL cadres so graphically. Almost all the newspapers featured the BCL cadres lunging forward with guns in hand shooting at the opposition Shibir cadres with police taking no action to stop the fighting. BCL leaders say that they with the help of general students resisted the onslaught of Shibir. The incident begs the questions as to what made Shibir so outrageous that necessitated the resistance, what led the students to use lethal weapons and most importantly what the authorities have already done to arrest the gun wielding students. We have the disconcerting report that the very gun-toting BCL leaders went to the Motihar police station to file cases against the Shibir cadres and went away without police arresting them obviously because they are the pro-government student cadres. This cannot be the norms of a democratic country. The long culture of ruling party autocracy and resultant injustice and oppression has been creating social maladies and unrest. The government can no longer evade responsibility for making the opposition scapegoat for all these serious social malaise.
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