STATEMENT:Immediate Withdrawal of Restriction on Political Activities is the Demand of the Moment to Control the Increasing Trend of Fundamentalist

Adv. Shahanur Islam Programme Manager-Legal & Human Rights A fundamentalist terrorist leader

 Mufti Mansurul Huq has been distributing a booklet Captioned “Afghan Zihad” with the call to organize Islamic militants to capture state power like Taliban of Afghanistan (See: Daily “Amader Shomoy” dated 10th July, 2007). Due to the imposition of restriction of secular political activities by the present Caretaker Govt., a political vacuum has been created. This has opened the doors to underground terrorist activities of Taliban-trained Islamic militants in Bangladesh. If the restriction of normal political activities is prolonged and election is delayed the militants will spread their domination among Madrasha students and masses of orthodox rural people. The Taleban of Afghanistan adopted the same tactics to dominate the Madrasha student and rural orthodox mass people. They organized and trained them with arms to fight against the gov’t to overthrow state power. At the initial stage of their action they occupied the gov’t establishment in small-town areas and eventually they succeeded in capturing the capital. The underground Islamic militants in Bangladesh are following the same road map to overthrow state power. It is horrible to imagine what reign of terror the people of Bangladesh may be facing under Islamic Militant Rule in the future if it is not controlled right at this moment. The present Caretaker gov’t under Dr. Fakruddin Ahmed came to power on 11 January 2007 under Bangladesh constitution Article 58(C), with mandatory binding to hold election and hand over the power to the people representatives within 90 days. Already 6 months – that is, more than 180 days – have passed, but no visible preparation for election is seen in the performance of the care taker gov’t. They are prolonging their power with the plea of preparation of photo voter list and completion of action against corruption. From the pilot project of preparing a voter list at one of the municipal area’s Sreepur about 20 miles from the capital city, Dhaka it is found that only about 42,000 voters have been listed. The performance of this pilot project was directly guided by the close supervision of chief election commissioner, 2 election commissioner, army chief, many other advisors and high gov’t officials. But the enlistment of these 42, 000 voters with photographs and fingerprints was not correctly done; there are questions about the accuracy of the list. With the experience of the questionable performance of this pilot project there is strong doubt about the correct preparation of a voter list for the estimated 90 million voters, especially in the remote rural areas of Bangladesh where there is no proper communication, and little electricity and infrastructure for using the computers, laptops, printers etc necessary for capturing photographs and fingerprints. For such enlistment of huge nos. of voters a huge number of expert computer operators, digital camera operators and operators of other accessories need to be recruited and trained. From the present literate population of Bangladesh arrangement of such huge nos. of experts is simply an impossible task. The preparation of a voter list with photographs and fingerprints for all estimated 90 million voters all over the country is an impossible ambition on the part of the present caretaker gov’t and Election Commission. The people of Bangladesh are afraid of whether the election is going to be trapped under this impossible idea. There is fear that with the plea of election preparation the caretaker gov’t will continue their power with the backing of the army, under the umbrella of emergency rule. Such a situation can be averted if an up to date voter list is simply prepared as per the verdict of Supreme Court of Bangladesh. Action against corruption is part of a continued process of upholding the rule of law. So, imposing restriction on political activities and the Constitution under the state of emergency until completion of the judgment of anticorruption cases cannot be accepted as a valid reason for the caretaker government’s continuation of a state of emergency and restriction of political activities. As per the constitution of Bangladesh the duration of emergency is valid only up to 120 days from the date of its promulgation on 11 January 2007. Democratic activities must be restored without losing further time, to hold general elections within the quickest possible timeframe to save Bangladesh from the horror of fundamentalist terrorism and uphold the democratic human rights of every citizen