Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam has described former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as the “butcher of Bangladesh” and said the interim government’s job is to bring her back to Dhaka and try her for “crimes against humanity”.
“One of the main responsibilities of the interim government is to hold trials of the people who killed protesters during the mass uprising in July,” said Alam on Sunday, mentioning that there has been much hue and cry about his Facebook post from the Ekushey Boi Mela.
While sharing 12 points, the Press Secretary said the interim government is neutral only to its stakeholders - the students and the parties that played their part not only during the uprising but over the years to restore “stolen democracy”.
Naturally, Alam said, the interim government has a firm and unyielding position against the party that imposed “brutal dictatorship, committed grave crimes against humanity and plundered state resources” for 15 long years.
In a long post from his verified Facebook account, he said the interim government is also determined to hold the Bangladesh Awami League, its “enablers, apologists and its lackeys” to account for the massacres, the “thousands of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and the looting” of hundreds of billions of dollars. “Our mandate is to prosecute these crimes,” Alam stressed.
“When we talk — as the spokespeople of the chief adviser -- we generally give updates on the IG's progress and accomplishments. We also talk at length about the crimes of Sheikh Hasina,” said the Press Secretary.
Alam said the people who think he is talking too much about politics or the Awami League and its killings and grand larceny are the AL apologists – “We know what you did all these years. Sorry, I won't stop — until the very last day of my work.”
Alam said Sheikh Hasina is one of the world's most “brutal and corrupt dictators” and he will not hesitate to remind people about the “kind of killer she was”.
“It is a moral position. Besides, if we believe in democracy, we must be able to speak against Hasina for all we want — this is the individual liberty that we speak of in democracy, this is freedom of speech,” he mentioned.
Six months into the mass uprising, Alam said, the AL is still in “denial” and its apologists, leaders, pro-AL journalists, its foreign backers and its supporters are in denial. “They aim to create an alternative history - one in which they are the victims, police are not the aggressors.”