Police foil pro-opposition seminar

The police foiled a seminar scheduled to be organised by a pro-BNP civic platform, Zia Parishad, at the Engineers’ Institution, Bangladesh on Saturday.

Police said the organisers did not take permission to holding the seminar, but the organisers said they got verbal permission from the law enforcement.

Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was scheduled to address the seminar, ‘Citizen Rights, Rule of Law and Democracy: Bangladesh Perspective’ as the chief guest.

Zia Parishad chairman Kabir Murad alleged that a group of policemen arrived in the seminar venue around 10:00 o’clock in the morning and asked them not to organise the programme saying it had no permission.

He said they applied to the police on 2 July for the seminar and they got verbal permission on 4 July from the police authorities.

When contacted, police’s deputy commissioner of Ramna Zone Maruf Hossain claimed that neither BNP nor anyone else applied to the police authorities for the permission.

Voicing his dismay at the police obstruction, Mirza Fakhrul alleged the Bangladesh Awami League-led government has destroyed the minimum democratic space in the country, only to perpetuate its power.

"Now the country lacks minimum democratic space while people have no freedom to express their views and opinions," he said.

Fakhrul said it was a programme of a non-political organisation but the government did not allow them to hold it. "We strongly condemn and protest this."

He regretted that police have now chosen the path of repression and were working for the continuation of misrule.