Another senseless hartal

THE country has been made to suffer yet another senseless hartal called by Jamaat on Monday to protest a verdict of the International War Crimes Tribunal (ICT). One wonders how the public comes into the picture in this party's scheme of protesting a court verdict. What is baffling is how does Jamaat even hope to gain people's sympathy for its political programme by holding them hostage?

Knowing full well that common people never supports unreasonable hartal as a tool of political protest, Jamaat activists were engaged in street violence, vandalism and destruction of transports and other public properties in the name of enforcing hartal, the previous day.

According to report, the ICT has punished three Jamaat leaders for contempt of court as they had questioned the ICT as well as the ongoing prosecutions at ICT against persons accused of committing crimes against humanity during the Liberation War. Since it was a judicial verdict against the said Jamaat leaders, it would have been appropriate for the party to limit itself to the standard procedure of challenging it in the higher court. Instead, by abusing this political weapon of protest, Jamaat has once again exposed its political bankruptcy.

Jamaat should be wiser by now to see the futility of atrocious means of protest including hartal. So, it is time it saw reason, shunned the path of violence and returned to peaceful means to press home its political demands.