Editorial
We condemn the violence most strongly
What did the 18-party siege achieve?
We wonder what the BNP and its alliance members have achieved in the half-day siege yesterday. Except for the violence, that we had predicted in this very column yesterday, that the programme would engender because of the fact that the siege would be 'enforced' by the 18-party alliance, anything that the BNP-led alliance had wanted to convey to the people was marred by senseless violence and destruction. It sounds ludicrous that the siege, among other things, was to protest against the public sufferings caused by government policies.
We cannot agree with the BNP leaders that the programme was supported by the people spontaneously. The matter was compounded by the fact that the AL and its student and youth wings were on the streets too, which reportedly, had also indulged in violence and damaging of vehicles.
The situation on the streets was rather different yesterday than on previous occasions. The alliance activists were seen to be more active and belligerent, indulging in pitched battles with the police. Living up to the veiled threat of the acting secretary general to keep all types of vehicle off the roads, the opposition activists had targeted the vehicles that had ventured on the streets. Although it was supposed to be 'peaceful' programme, violence had occurred in some parts of the country that resulted in two deaths and more than hundred injured and destruction of property both public and private including ambulances and police vehicles.
And in spite of what the BNP says about the police preventing it from exercising its political right, we are afraid that exercising ones political right can not subvert the political rights of others which the BNP-led alliance programme had certainly done. By the same token, using the student wing of the ruling party to thwart the programme cannot be condoned. The job of the law enforcing agencies cannot be outsourced to supra government elements.
When political programmes lead to vandalism and pitched battles between the opposition which called the programme, and its political opponents and the law enforcing agencie, with the aim to stifle that programme, than that no longer remains a political programme but becomes a political joust. We condemn such violence in the strongest possible terms.
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