Kid's emotional appeal to PM
“Sheikh Hasina, aunty, please return my papa before Eid.
“Since papa went missing, ammu doesn't buy me any dress for Eid. I want to go for Eid shopping with my papa. I want to celebrate Eid with my papa.”
As Adiba Islam Hridi, six, made this direct, emotional appeal to the prime minister, it was difficult for everyone present in the Jatiya Press Club to hold their tears.
Her father Parvez Hossain, a Chhatra Dal leader from Bangshal in the capital, went missing on December 2, 2013, from Shahbagh.
Hridi was only two at the time. Her mother Farzana Hossain was then expecting her brother, Araf Hossain, who never got to see his father.
Family members of 25 such victims who disappeared since 2013 called upon the government yesterday to set up an independent investigation commission to find out the fate of their loved ones and to punish those involved in their “forced” disappearance.
They made the call at the Press Club at a programme organised under the banner “Call of mother -- Return our sons, who were victims of forced disappearance, before Eid.”
With photos of their loved ones in their hands and tears in their eyes, fathers, mothers, children and wives of the victims called on the PM to realise their pain given she herself lost most of her family members on August 15, 1975.
“Three years and eight months have passed since my son was picked up by Rab on December 2, 2013, from our house at Shahinbagh. But the honourable prime minister has done nothing so that I can have my son back,” said Fatema Amin, mother of Sumon, a local leader of Chhatra Dal, a pro-BNP student body.
“While whisking away my son, Rab officials told us he will return home soon … I just want to give my son one last hug before I die,” she said, sobbing violently.
“My last wish is to see my son's final resting place,” she added, after a brief pause.
In 2013 and 2014, the BNP-led opposition waged a violent anti-government protest in efforts to foil the January 5 election in 2014.
Then in early 2015, the 20-party opposition combine took to the streets across the country to mark the first year of the “illegal government” of Sheikh Hasina and to demand the resignation of her government.
It was in these three years that many leaders of Dhaka city Chhatra Dal and other BNP front organisations went missing.
For Kazi Abdul Matin, a freedom fighter and a retired army official, the case is completely different. His son Kazi Rakibul Islam Shaon, organising secretary of Comilla Victoria College Chhatra League, was picked up by law enforcers from their Comilla home on March 29, 2014.
“I went everywhere -- the Prime Minister's Office, the Army Headquarters, the Rab Headquarters and the secretariat -- only to get non-cooperation…. I am a freedom fighter as well as a retired army member.
“Even so, I couldn't draw the attention of any high officials of the government or the law enforcement agencies who could tell me where my son is,” said Matin, who was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's bodyguard in 1974.
Shammi Sultana, wife of Khaled Hossain Sohel, a Chhatra Dal leader of Sutrapur in Old Dhaka who was allegedly picked up near the Dhaka Central Jail gate on November 29, 2013, said: “The pain and anguish in our hearts made our lives not worth living. I don't find words when my child asks me when her father will come back.”
Odhikar President Prof CR Abrar, Nagorik Oikya Convener Mahmudur Rahman Manna, Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal General Secretary Khalequzzaman, rights activist Nur Khan, Nari Pokkho Member Shirin Haq, among others, spoke at the programme.
Meanwhile, Ain o Salish Kendra in a statement yesterday said as many as 540 people became victim of enforced disappearance or abduction at the hands of law enforcement agencies in the last 11 years since 2007.
Of the 540, bodies of 78 were later found while 347 are still missing, it added.
The fate of the others is not clear.
In the first seven months this year, at least 45 people became victims of enforced disappearance or abduction, according to the statement.
The rights body called on the government to find out the whereabouts of the missing people and to ratify the international charter against enforced disappearance.
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