Arrests were of AL activists, not Trump supporters: CA Press Wing

There have been no arrests or crackdowns on the supporters of US president-elect Donald Trump in Bangladesh, said the chief adviser’s press wing on Sunday night.

Some Indian newspapers have been “aggressively spreading misinformation” about the student-led mass uprising since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in the uprising in August, said the press wing through its fact-checking Facebook page.

“They have hugely exaggerated the violence against minorities during the post-revolution days. They just repeated the same canards over today’s arrest of AL supporters,” the message reads.

Dozens of activists of the Bangladesh Awami League, whose leadership, officials, and members have been accused of mass murders, corruption, and laundering of tens of billions of dollars, were arrested in the country on Sunday on charges of planning subversive activities in the capital, Dhaka, said the press wing.

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police has issued a statement to this effect.

“Some of these people were carrying Donald Trump’s photos after the fugitive AL leader, Sheikh Hasina, reportedly ordered her supporters to carry his portrait and use them as a shield against arrests,” said the press wing.

“They told police they didn’t follow US politics and only carried Trump posters at the order of Hasina,” the press wing claimed.

It may be mentioned that some sections of the Indian media, notably India Today, reported yesterday’s events in Bangladesh in a completely wrong light.

For example, they described the rally called by the Awami League at Gulistan’s Zero Point on the occasion of Noor Hossain Day (10 November), an annual event, as one called by “Trump supporters” to celebrate the Republican candidate’s victory in the US presidential election last week.

There is no record of any group identifying themselves as “Trump supporters” or celebrating his successes in the past in Bangladesh. There is also no mention of the US president-elect in any of the Awami League literature surrounding their programme on Noor Hossain Day, which in the end failed to materialise due to a lack of participants.

There is, however, an instruction from ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, that the CA Press Wing’s statement alluded to briefly, for the AL activists attending Sunday’s programme, to carry posters of Trump alongside those of Sheikh Hasina and Bangabandhu, and specifically to use the ones of Trump to shield themselves against police action.

The AL activists were to take photos of these incidents and provide them to their leadership, so that they could be passed on to Trump - all with the intention, presumably, of riling the next US president into going against the interim government led by Professor Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh.

These potentially seditious instructions were contained in a call record that leaked last week, between Hasina and one of her party activists.

Although UNB has not independently verified the authenticity of the recording, the fact that many AL activists were later arrested carrying out the same instructions verifies itself.

Members of the interim government had already made clear on Saturday that no AL rally or programme would be allowed to go ahead on Sunday, and the raids and arrests that followed must be seen in that light.