Editorial
Police high-handedness against opposition
When will it stop?
The police action against opposition activists during hartal hours on Saturday has clearly shown that the government is in no mood to allow them space. Assaulting and harassing of senior leaders of the opposition, randomly arresting activists, indecently dragging women party loyalists on to the police van -- all these have become routine rituals on hartal days. Only that the intensity of repression is growing with each passing opposition programme. Although we are opposed to hartal, we find no words strong enough to condemn the virtual unleashing of the police against opposition. When the police had clubbed activists of Awami League in the past, not even sparing women, we expressed the hope that incidents of the kind would not occur again. But proving us wrong, clothes of some senior opposition leaders were tugged at and torn, injuring them during scuffles last Saturday.But where was the provocation? By all accounts, they did not disrupt peace nor were their any visible signs of attempted disruption. Secondly, police did not issue any prohibitive order in anticipation of trouble, so that in their perception no particular threat to peace existed. Then why on earth did the police resort to such violent tactics? We can assume that the police acted either on orders from the top or on their own. If the former is true, then we put a simple question to the government -- why deny the opposition their legitimate rights to assemble, hold rallies and express their dissent in a peaceful way? The government owes an explanation to the people. Secondly, if the assumption that the police acted on their own holds true, then are we to believe that the police can do whatever they will and can get away with their excesses without having to account for it? We believe though, the police couldn't have acted the way they did without an obvert or covert nod of approval from the political leadership at some level. The overriding consideration ought to be that if the opposition is denied its legitimate space to function within the bounds of Constitution, democracy is denigrated into a veritabl autocracy of the majority.
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