Militancy emerged after killing of Bangabandhu

Militancy has infiltrated into Bangladesh through killing of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, said speakers at a roundtable yesterday.
The country has given birth to militancy after allowing Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami in doing politics through the Fifth Amendment to the constitution after Bangabandhu's killing, they said.
This observation came at the meeting titled "Extremism and Terrorism: the Role of Political Parties in Bangladesh" held at National Press Club in the city.
Speaking as the chief discussant Prof Imtiaz Ahmed of Dhaka University's International Relations department said to make the country free from extremism the political parties of Bangladesh itself should refrain from following it.
"Extremism refers to those people who can't tolerate opinions of others and can do whatever they want. The political parties of the country especially two big political parties do not tolerate opinions of others," he said.
Imtiaz Ahmed observed that there is a lack of practicing intra-party and inter-party democracy in the political parties.
"Our politics has become leader centric. [The words] leader, party, government and the state are mingled. We recognise any party by the leader, the government by the party and the state by the government," he said adding, "Not only that the political parties create own cultural groups and divisions in educational institutions by so called red, pink and white groups to back their own position."
Imtiaz mentioned that those unskilled and semi-skilled workers who fly to Middle East bring terrorism in the country. "Most of these workers are not well-educated. As a result, they are easily convinced of culture and norms of those countries and try to establish it in our country blindly," he said.
Secretary of Shushashoner Janya Nagorik (Shujan) Badiul Alam Majumder said militancy could not be reduced from the country by hanging one or two militants, as the country has become "fertile land of militancy" over the past few decades.
The www.the-editor.net, an online newspaper, organised the roundtable.
Former army chief Maj Gen KM Shafiullah, lawmaker Nazma Aktar, president of Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) Manjurul Ahsan Khan, former diplomat Waliur Rhaman, general secretary of Awami Swechhasebak League Pankaj Debnath, among others, also spoke.
Shamim Hayder Talukder, managing director of the online newspaper, moderated the programme.