Bangladesh’s interim govt to announce ‘proclamation of July uprising’

“We hope within few days the proclamation will be prepared with the participation and consensus of all and presented before the nation,” Shafiqul Alam, Press Secretary to the chief adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, told reporters in a midnight press conference.

Addressing reporters in front of Yunus’ official Jamuna residence, Alam said the declaration would be based on the views of all participating students, political parties, and stakeholders, including the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement that led to the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime on August 5.

Alam said the government took the initiative to prepare the proposed charter to “consolidate the people’s unity, anti-fascist spirit and desire for state reform developed through the July uprising”.

The Anti-Discrimination Students Movement along with the National Citizens Committee, another grouping led by the students, two days ago in a surprise development said it would announce the proclamation of the July uprising on Tuesday afternoon at Dhaka’s Central Shaheed Minar.

But soon after the government’s midnight announcement, the students’ platform hurriedly called an emergency meeting and nearly two hours later told newsmen that instead of the proclamation they would rather stage a “march for unity” at the same venue and time.

“The Mujibist ’72 constitution will be buried (in the proclamation) in the very place where the one-point declaration was made during the July uprising,” the platform’s convener Hasnat Abdullah told a press conference on December 29.

Abdullah at that time said that “Indian aggression was initiated through the principles of the 1972 constitution (and) the proclamation will make it clear how the Mujibist constitution destroyed the aspirations of the people and exactly how we want to replace it”.

The platform leader said the proclamation was expected to declare “irrelevant” the deposed premier’s “Nazi Awami League” in Bangladesh as well.

Anti-Discrimination Students Movement leader and chief organiser of the National Citizens’ Committee Sarjis Alam told the same press conference that “we believe the way our revolution was embraced by all anti-fascists; this proclamation will also contain everyone’s hopes and aspirations”.

The 1972 constitution was framed a year after the emergence of independent Bangladesh by representatives elected in the 1970 elections in line with their “mandate” as “constitute assembly” members with Awami League under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gaining an absolute majority.

The party won 160 of the 162 general seats and all seven women’s seats in then-East Pakistan. However, Pakistan’s then-military junta under General Yahya Khan eventually launched a sudden army crackdown leading to the Liberation War.

The interim government visibly distanced itself from the “proclamation” with Yunus’ press secretary saying “the government has nothing to do with it” and “wants see it (proclamation) as ‘private initiative’”.

Awami League has not been seen in the public sphere since the August 5 ouster of the regime as many of its leaders were arrested or are on the run at home and abroad, limiting their activities on social media platforms occasionally.

But some leaders of ex-premier Khaleda Zia’s BNP sharply reacted to the proposal with its highest policy-making standing committee member Mirza Abbas saying the constitution was written in 1972 at the cost of the blood of 3 million martyrs.

“As your seniors, we feel disappointed when you (Student Movement leaders) say the constitution should be buried. If there is anything bad in the constitution, it can be amended,” he told reporters.

Abbas said, “When you (student leaders) say things like this, it sounds fascist” as fascists used to say, ‘we will bury them, kill them, and cut them off”.

The students’ platform and different political groups including BNP often dub the ousted regime as “fascist”. PTI AR RHL