Dhaka, Dec 21 : Bangladesh's former minister Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury on Sunday termed the situation in Bangladesh "tense and volatile" as the election is approaching. He claimed that the Yunus regime is assisting or instigating some of the extremist parties to create chaos on a daily basis to continue their gripping power.

In an exclusive interview with IANS, Chowdhury stated that anti-India protests are only concentrated in certain parts of Dhaka and Chittagong and there is no country-wide sentiment against India and termed these demonstrations "staged". He also spoke about the killing of Inquilab Mancha leader Sharif Osman Hadi.

Excerpts:

IANS: What is the condition in Bangladesh right now?

Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury: The condition in Bangladesh is very tense, especially in the capital city Dhaka and our second city Chittagong, because it is being patronised by the ruling regime. They are assisting or instigating some of the extremist parties and platforms to come out on a daily basis and cause chaos and trouble on a daily basis. So, yes, it remains quite volatile because the election is approaching. It appears that they want to postpone at least the schedule of the election and continue their gripping power. With that in mind, they are continuing their agitation. They have a couple of YouTubers and demagogues online who are being constantly asked to instigate people. Besides, they also have some extremist political parties such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and Jamaat-e-Islami student outfit Shibir. So they are constantly using these resources to create social instability in the country.

IANS: Your opinion on the killing of Inquilab Mancha leader Sharif Osman Hadi?

Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury: See, who had killed Hadi is something that we can't, of course, comment on. But from what we are seeing out in the public and on social media is that it appears he was attacked by someone within his close circle. It appears to be a very planned action and he had powerful enemies, political enemies, within the BNP as well as the Jamaat-e-Islami. One of the student leaders of Dhaka University had declared his intention to stand against Hadi, and he was a candidate, an independent candidate, against one of the powerful BNP leaders. So, the suspicion is that whoever had attacked him didn't want him to continue into the election. So, that is our understanding. But if it was done by the regime itself, I won't be surprised because several individuals within the government had been quite vocal about taking revenge and escalating the situation to what it is today.

So, it just appears as if the whole thing was planned to instigate and agitate a certain quarter of our society. Hadi was not a politically significant individual. He was a fringe element with extremely radical and fanatic views and he was not even taken seriously by anybody inside the country, amongst his electorate or outside of the country. He was a political nobody. Now he has been turned into somebody in Bangladesh politics and someone has done it, or a group of people have done it, intentionally. So, of course, our suspicion is that whoever wanted to turn him into a martyr had probably planned this action. Perhaps they didn't want to get him killed because what we have seen is that he was attacked and eventually, after treatment failure or mismanagement, or even not being able to treat him, he had passed away.

So it was probably something that had gone out of control. They wanted to stir up tension and trouble and then it just went out of control because he had passed away and then they wanted to capitalise on it, the raw emotion of certain individuals, because this political party, NCP, and their allied extremist outfits had gone into complete political oblivion. They were not even considered by the people as a true challenger in the next upcoming election that they are trying to hold in a one-sided manner. Even in the one-sided election, these people don't seem to have any relevance or any electoral significance. So, they want to create that, they want to beef up, and this is what they have done even in the run-up to the 5th of August 2024. We had seen evidence of targeted killings, stirring up emotion and targeted attacks on protesters themselves. So, it looks like an insider job.

IANS: Is there an internal conspiracy behind Hadi's death?

Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury: If I were to look at the impact of his death, it appears that a group of people had benefited from it. So those who are the beneficiaries of this killing may or may not have planned it. They may have planned an attack to create sympathy for them. The attack had probably turned into something that they didn't anticipate, or that they wanted to kill him and then they wanted an immediate reaction. But of course, he did not die immediately. So, these are all speculations. I don't want to go into these speculations. Of course, we want an investigation, but the situation is such that they're not doing any investigation. And some social media personality had declared that one of Hadi's former colleagues had done the job. And based on what he had shared on social media, there is some kind of a hunt going on in the country where random individuals are being picked up and arrested.

So, we've seen this in the past in Bangladesh as well, when our leader, opposition leader at the time, Sheikh Hasina, was attacked. They had staged a drama with some random individual called George Mia, and created this drama where they were claiming that Mr George Mia, an insignificant citizen with no ties to any political party or even terrorist outfit, a random individual picked up from the street, and they claimed that he was the one who planned to kill our leader. And at that time, a lot of people were killed and he threw military grenades towards the procession. So, it looks like another drama is being staged. So we don't know what's happening inside. We don't know what's happening inside the investigative process, because a lot of it is staged, from what we understand.

IANS: Is there a connection between the upcoming election in Bangladesh and Hadi's death?

Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury: It appears so. If they can continue this volatile situation, they have an argument in their favour that the election cannot be held in good time. Although it's a one-sided election, they want it to be delayed as long as possible. You see, the election is being held just before the Ramadan period, and then if it is delayed by a month, you have the whole month with people not turning up for the election. And then you have the summer Vaisakh season, where you have a lot of north-westers and cyclones in the country because of the monsoon coming during that season. So, that means that the entire end of summer and rainy season will be off from elections being held and they can postpone it to the end of the year.

This is just a timeline I'm telling you about. So it seems like they want to delay it so that Mr Yunus can continue and groom probably a successor for him, or they might also be looking at the end of the tenure of the President, who I think near the end of 2026 will have his tenure ended, in which case Mr Yunus could just be in the position of the Presidency. So, a lot of these things are scenarios which he's probably working out, which one is the most beneficial scenario for him to go ahead with. So, it looks like a plotted incident, something that they plotted themselves.

IANS: Is it true that illegal Bangladeshis have been pushed into India during the Yunus regime?

Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury: I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't want to go into the legality of the people who had gone into India. There had been a lot of persecution of political activists and religious minorities. So, people may have tried to come to India legally or illegally in order to save themselves. So, even if the legality is questionable after the 5th of August, the humanitarian consideration is primary here. Why would someone try to cross after the 5th of August? The context has to be taken into account. People have come with the hope that they will find refuge here. I mean, those who have come to cause trouble are, of course, a different category altogether. But I would assume that many of the people who had come to India after the 5th of August have come to seek refuge, in fact, not necessarily to cause any trouble.

IANS: Your opinion on anti-India protests in Bangladesh?

Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury: Anti-India protests are only concentrated in certain parts of Dhaka and Chittagong. It's not like a country-wide sentiment against India. A few angry, extremist, fanatic students from different institutions, including Qawmi Madrasas and Dhaka University itself, a few of them have brought in or forced many Madrasa students to join them. You see, Madrasa students who live inside the compounds are dependent on the Madrasas for their food and shelter. If they're forced to attend these processions, they have no choice. They will lose the only shelter they have, food and lodging.

So, you'd see that their procession may look quite big because of this forced participation, but the individuals who are speaking and shouting out and trying to cause trouble are a very small number of people. You will not see average citizens of Dhaka or Chittagong taking part willingly in this kind of crazy procession. These are very manageable processions. All it takes is willingness on the part of law enforcement. If they do not allow institutions to force students to join these protests, no one will come. If they simply declare that tomorrow at Shahbagh Square, let's gather those of us who are opposed to India or whatever, you know, against the Awami regime or whatever, you won't even get more than 100 people in a city of three crore.

So, these are all staged, including, you know, the funeral that we've seen yesterday. They force people to attend. Even BNP activists do not come to their processions anymore. They now realise that these people are extremists who have somehow gotten into power and they don't want to leave. So, average Bangladeshis, if you look even tomorrow, if you go to an Indian visa centre, there is a line of people who are wanting humanitarian support, medical care, healthcare, education, etc. If there is an anti-India sentiment, why would people want to come here for these services? It's absolutely wrong, and not a single Indian citizen has been attacked in the country. But these people are wanting people to do this. People don't want these extremists to run Bangladesh.

Bangladeshis, by their very nature, also carry a very important ethnic identity, which is called the Bengali identity, which is a combination of our hundreds of thousands of years of shared history and tradition with our Bengali ethnic people in India and abroad. So, it's not just some kind of Salafist Wahhabi, extremist-minded identity that they have in the country. It's not just a religion-based identity that we have as citizens of the country. Some people may or may not have some unreasonable level of grievance against India, against the West, against everything, but there are very few such people. If the grievance is so much, why don't we see average, common citizens of the country taking part in any of their processions? You will not find an average rickshaw puller or an office-goer or a student, without being under duress, attending these kinds of processions. They're being forced to go for these events.

/IANS