Ashraful Alam, better known as Hero Alam, an independent candidate in the by-election of the Dhaka 17 Constituency, was criminally assaulted by the thugs of the ruling Bangladesh Awami League while he was visiting a polling center on July 17, 2023. The police and election officials watched silently. Alam had to be sent to a medical clinic for treatment. Earlier, he complained that his polling agents were beaten and driven away by the ruling thugs from a few centers.
The by-election was the display of another farce by the administration of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in total defiance of the US punitive sanctions and visa restrictions, as well as a global demand for a free, fair, and participatory elections to be held in a few months.
The Coalition for Human Rights & Democracy in Bangladesh (CHRD Bangladesh) strongly condemns the attack on a candidate in a parliamentary election. Meanwhile, the United States, the United Nations, Amnesty International and other rights organizations protested the assault, demanding an urgent investigation into the incident and punishment to the perpetrators. “This type of political violence has no place in democratic elections,” said Matthew Miller, spokesperson at the US State Department, on July 17, 2023.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other opposition parties have been staging peaceful rallies in Dhaka and outside the capital to press for their One Point demand for the resignation of the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to be followed by national polls under a neutral caretaker government (CTG). They remained adamant on their demands and vowed that they would neither participate in an election under Hasina nor will it be allowed, as they perceived that to be a replay of the heightened electoral farce that took place in 2014 and 2018.
The rally in Dhaka on July 12, 2023 was undisturbed, even though there were reports of intimidations by the police and ruling elements on the opposition groups on their way to the venue. However, the subsequent rallies of the party’s youth wing in other parts of the country left two activists dead–a total of 19 since last October–when the police and ruling thugs attacked the opposition groups.
CHRD Bangladesh considers that these criminal acts by the ruling coterie demand additional and stricter sanctions on the defiant and incorrigible regime. In addition, they also fall within the purview of the US’s announced visa restrictions which also apply to the family members of the perpetrators, past and present.
These unabated criminal acts also demonstrate that there cannot not be any free and fair elections under the Hasina administration. To ensure a credible election, more so to ensure few of the most important US overseas priorities of “election integrity” and combating “authoritarianism” and “corruption” in Bangladesh, the next election must be held under a neutral CTG at the earliest.