Dhaka, Sep 6: Several students at Bangladesh’s Chittagong University (CU) staged a protest at the campus on early Saturday, slamming the controversial remarks made by Jamaat-e-Islami leader Sirajul Islam about the recent clashes that erupted following the assault of a female student, local media reported.
Last week, over a hundred people were injured when violence broke out between CU students and locals after a dormitory security guard allegedly assaulted a female student near the campus.
The latest protest was triggered after a video of a Thursday evening meeting organised by the residents of Jobra village, near the university, discussing the recent clashes at CU, went viral on social media, reports leading Bangladeshi daily Prothom Alo.
During the meeting, radical Islamist leader Sirajul Islam had said, “Chittagong University is established on our ancestral property. We are the owners of Chittagong University and the surrounding area. We are landowners, we will not accept anyone interfering with the landowner.”
“This university is our heart. We own this place, so we will not accept any injustice. We have to respect it. If the university does not respect us properly, we will take necessary action against the people,” he added.
The discussions sparked public outrage and prompted students to hold demonstrations at CU, raising slogans against the Jamaat leader, calling him “Terrorists’ broker” and saying that such statements will not be tolerated. Meanwhile, the student wing of Jamaat, Chhatra Shibir, has rejected Sirajul’s statement.
They have also alleged that it was the top leaders of the local Chhatra Dal, the student wing of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), who were “directly involved” in the incident. However, Chhatra Dal has refuted the allegations against its and BNP’s leaders and claimed that Chhatra Shibir is attempting to shift the blame for the clash to serve Jamaat’s political agenda.
The violent confrontations in CU came amid rising public unrest in Bangladesh, which has witnessed multiple student protest movements and growing lawlessness since the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government assumed power last August.
IANS