Editorial
Death of a jute worker in Ctg
Why police action often leads to such tragedy?
The incident of a jute mill worker in Chittagong dying in the hands of the police leaves us shocked beyond comprehension. And before commenting any further on the tragedy we would like to ask the relevant authorities: Why must the police continue to take human lives, especially when those humans happen to be poor, hard working factory workers or day-labourers going to the authorities with their rightful demands? We understand often it necessitates resorting to baton charge, but beating a person to death is simply unacceptable. In the case of the workers of Amin Jute Mills, they had queued up at the mill gate for payment of their daily wages accrued for nearly three months. That is a long period to wait considering the low wages workers get in this country and rise in prices of essentials. But, instead of taking their plight into consideration the mill management allegedly kept on giving them false dates. And at one stage when the frustrated workers began to agitate angrily, the mill authorities called in the police. Reportedly, most of the agitating workers came from the northern districts that are now under floodwater and they have been asking for the wages so that they could send the money home to their family members. We strongly feel the humanitarian aspect of the situation has been ignored by the mill authorities. We believe the tragedy in Chittagong could have been averted had the mill authorities been less callous and more proactive. Before engaging a labour force it is only logical to have the needed funds ready so that wages can be paid in time. And we also believe the death of the worker could have been prevented had the police been more restrained in handling crowd behaviour. While we condemn anyone engaging in violent clashes with the members of the law-enforcing agencies, we at the same time fail to give any credence to a force that is trigger-happy. There may be one hundred reasons to bring a crowd under control, but there can be no acceptable reason to cause death of a single person while doing so. And yet, we often see tragic end of lives whenever police goes into action to quell an angry crowd. This brutal, unfriendly face of our police force reminds us of that of the colonial era. We regret that after 36 years of independence this has not changed.
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