Innocent children falling victim to extremisms

Innocent children belonging to the families of suspected extremists are becoming victim of circumstance in operations against extremists, worrying academics and psychiatrists on how such damage could be prevented.
At least six children aged between two months and 15 years were killed, one minor girl sustained critical injuries and five children experienced violent extremism after September 10, 2016, when law enforcers launched crackdown on extremism following Gulshan café on July 1, 2016 that left 29 people, including 17 foreigners, killed. 
At least six women extremists were also killed and many other were injured in Dhaka, Sylhet, Chittagong and Moulvibazar between in the past four months.
Police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit chief Monirul Islam said that extremists were misguiding their children and committing suicide along with their families to avoid arrest ‘with wrong interpretation of Islam and jihad and Shahadat.’
He suggested that proper knowledge of religion and cultural values should be spread across the country.
Dhaka University criminology department teacher Syed Mahfujul Haque Marjan said that extremists basically used their trusted family network to carry out their operations or continue their motivation.
He believed that the extremists now wanted their families to carry on their ‘ideology’ and even it would continue if they got killed in the midst of their way to achieve their ‘goals.’
Mahfujul said that it was crucial to develop a counter ideology against the extremism. 
‘If we do not have any counter ideology, despite sudden success of the law enforcing authorities we will be in trouble in the long run,’ he believed. 
Rights defenders are also calling the law enforcing agencies to rethink their operation technique so that collateral damage especially affecting children could be avoided.
Former Rapid Acton Battalion official Hasinur Rahman recalled that two minors were killed in grenade explosion during a raid on a den of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh in Comilla in 2006 to capture JMB leader Mollah Omar, who was shot dead and his wife was killed in the same explosion.
Recent anxiety among the academics and psychiatrists triggered after post-mortem examinations ascertained on March 30 that four children were among the seven people killed in explosion inside a suspected den of extremists at Fatehpur village in Moulvibazar during an operation against extremists on March 29.
After the post-mortem, Moulvibazar district hospital resident medical officer Palash Roy said that of the four children, three were girls aged 12, 7 and 3 years and the gender of the other, a toddler, could not be established because of ‘terrific damage.’ 
A counter-terrorism official said that they had no option open to save the children as their parents were hurling grenades targeting law enforcers. 
Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University criminology and police science department teacher Mohammad Ashraful Alam believed that the children were being used as human shield. He said that the arrest of the suspected extremists alive was necessary to identify their masterminds.
Earlier on March 16, five people, including a woman and a toddler, were killed in a police raid code-named ‘Operation Assault 16’ on an extremists’ den at a two-storey building at Sitakunda in Chittagong.
Police investigators believed that adults who committed suicide were members of a JMB faction, which were earlier coordinated by Canadian-Bangladeshi Tamim Ahmed Chowdhury, killed along with two others in an operation in Narayanganj on August 27, 2016. 
On March 15, the police arrested a couple — Jahirul Islam Jasim and his wife Razia Sultana Arjina — along with their child at Sitakunda, which led investigators to conduct raid on a nearby house on March 16.
Earlier on December 24, 2016, a suspected extremist, along with a child, was killed, a four-year girl was rescued and four people were arrested on surrender during a raid on a suspected den of extremists at a Ashkona house in Dhaka.
During the operation, the girl sustained injuries when her mother tried to commit suicide exploding a ‘grenade.’ Her mother was ‘neutralised’ but the baby girl had to undergo an operation at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Police officials said that the child Afif Quaderi, killed at Ashkona, was son of banker Tanvir Quaderi, who ‘committed suicide’ during a raid on an Azimpur house in Dhaka on September 10, 2016.
The police on September 10, 2016 rescued three children, including two girls, from a suspected den of extremists at Azimpur and sent them to safe homes.
Afif’s twin brother Tahrim Quaderi Russell reportedly confessed before the court that their parents – Tanvir Quaderi and Abedatul Fatema Khadiza – were involved in extremism and they got involved in extremism by inheritance.
Psychiatrist Mekhala Sarkar at National Institute of Mental Health in Dhaka said that the children in those cases were victim of circumstances and their extremist parents were using them to get benefit especially avoiding suspicion against the family.
She believed that extremists had changed their operational tactics and wanted to engage their innocent children too. 
Massive awareness is the only way to save children from their extremist parents, she observed. 
Rights defender Nur Khan Liton said that deaths of children were the manifestations of poor operational procedure of the law enforcers and it triggered confusion.
‘Operation will succeed once we can catch the extremist alive and save other lives,’ said Nur Khan.

- See more at: http://www.newagebd.net/article/12532/innocent-children-falling-victim-to-extremisms#sthash.gzFmZvGz.dpuf