People wary of unrest

The mindless violence that left at least 507 people killed and 22,407 others injured in the year preceding the January 5 national elections was something the country has never witnessed since the restoration of democracy in 1990-91.

Before 2013, people never saw so many incidents of hurling petrol bombs at buses full of passengers, burning alive people or helper sleeping inside covered vans or trucks using gun powder and pouring petrol on CNG drivers and setting them afire.

None was spared -- be it kids travelling with parents, patients, daily labourers, students, office-goers or cook.

On a hartal day, 14-year-old Monir was waiting inside a parked van on Dhaka-Gazipur highway for his father, who had gone to see if the road ahead was free of trouble.

Pickets appeared from nowhere to set the vehicle alight, leaving the boy charred beyond recognition. He died on November 7.

While the memories of the mayhem are still fresh in people's minds, a renewed tension in the political arena has created public anxieties, especially after Chhatra League's attack on BNP and Chhatra Dal in the capital, the government hardline against the BNP rally in Gazipur and the opposition alliance's countrywide hartal.

BNP chief Khaleda Zia's latest call on the New Year's eve urging Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to accept her seven-point demand, including a fresh election as soon as possible, or face dire consequences, clearly points to a looming conflict. 

Then there is the two rival camps' programmes centring on the first anniversary of January 5 polls. 

Tajul Islam, a roadside vendor in Farmgate area, said he stayed nearly 10 years in Sudan during the civil war.

“But I never saw the rival camps setting fire to public vehicles or carrying out attacks on common people or business outlets there. But in Bangladesh the scenery is totally opposite. I fear that the horror of 2013 might revisit this year,” he told this correspondent. 

Bangladesh has gone through many chaotic political events since its birth in 1971, but neither of those remotely similar to the violence on common people in 2013.

The yearlong gruesome events were part of the campaign by the BNP-led opposition to realise the demand for parliamentary election under a non-party administration. While the Jamaat and its student wing Shibir unleashed terror to get the ongoing war crimes trials stalled.

At least 66 people were killed, including law enforcers, and scores others injured in four days from February 28 in clashes with Jamaat-Shibir men.

The party used women and children as human shields during clashes with law enforcers at different parts of the country, resulting in the death of three women in Bogra and a boy in Rajshahi in early March.

Apart from violence on streets, Jamaat also used its propaganda machine to mislead uneducated and religious people into joining their lethal movement. It was all lies, outright and outrageous, but it worked.

After a special tribunal's verdict against Jamaat leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee on February 28, their propaganda machine used a photoshopped image of Sayedee's face on the moon to entice people into unleashing a wave of terror.

Jamaat-Shibir men on March 3 gouged out an eye of a policeman and hacked him indiscriminately to death in Jhenidah.

Police arrested over 130 top and mid-level leaders of BNP and filed criminal cases against them throughout the year. Even leaders aged 70 to 80 were not spared.

As part of its hard line, law enforcement agencies did not allow opposition to hold rallies, processions and other modes of political activities on streets.

Amid nonstop hartals and blockades, economy was hit hard. 

Md Imran, a small trader of Karwan Bazar, said he had to take a loan of Tk 40,000 in December 2013 to ensure food for his four-member family as sales almost went down to zero. “We never want to go through such horrible experience.”

He added that the two top leaders of the country must resolve the dispute among them through discussion.

“We don't want to be victims of their political game anymore.”