SEXUAL HARASSMENT ON POHELA BOISHAK 21 injured as police attack protesters

At least 21 protestors, including two women, were injured after police charge baton and used water cannon on a peaceful march towards Dhaka Metropolitan Police headquarters demanding the arrest of suspects involved in sexual harassment of women gathered at the Dhaka University campus during Pahela Baishakh celebrations.voice said that her last wish was to see her children and grandchildren get an identity for which all in her generation suffered.Her 54-year son Nazrul Islam said, ‘What the enclave people want is nationality and access to government facilities.’ he added that all of them were happy over the latest development in the process for exchanging 162 enclaves between Bangladesh and India under the land boundary agreement signed back in 1974.
Bhiturkuti, with an area of 1 square mile located inside Bangladesh territory, has a population of around 1,100, said locals referring to the first-ever joint headcount conducted in 2011.
Neither the government of India nor of Pakistan had recognised the residents of the landlocked areas as their citizens and therefore they were derived of all basic rights of a citizen for years with no end to their suffering till date, said a number of enclave dwellers, who had seen both the British and the Pakistani regimes before Bangladesh was liberated from Pakistan in 1971.
The enclave dwellers said that none of them were eager to move to India.
‘The issue of the enclaves has long been hanging in balance for neglect by India. The people living in the enclaves have been deprived of citizenship and other civic facilities for 68 years,’ India-Bangladesh Enclaves Exchange Coordination Committee’s Bangladesh unit president Mohammad Moinul Haque told New Age on Sunday.
He said that the Indian high commissioner in Dhaka for the first time visited Dashiar Chhara, the largest Indian enclave located in Kurigram, on Sunday with the two countries now preparing for the land swap between them to put an end to the sufferings of over 51,000 people living in the landlocked areas without any official identity. ‘The High Commissioner Pankaj Saran has requested us to take patience and maintain peace as the two governments are now at the final stage to implement the LBA,’ the enclave leader said.
The enclave people in the territories of the two countries will have ‘the right to stay where they are, as nationals of the state to which the areas are transferred,’ said officials concerned.
In the latest development, Indian Lok Sabha, lower house of parliament, on Thursday unanimously passed a bill seeking amendment to the constitution to implement the historic Indira-Mujib pact to facilitate the exchange of the enclaves, transfer of adversely possessed areas and demarcation of 6.5km of unmarked border lands between the two neighbours.
Bangladesh ratified the pact on November 27, 1974 after the two countries had signed it on May 16, 1974 for demarcation of the 4,156 km land boundaries.
A total of 51 Bangladesh enclaves – 18 of Kurigram and 33 of Lalmonirhat – are located in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal and out of 111 Indian enclaves, 12 are situated in Kurigram, 59 in Lalmonirhat, four in Nilphamari and 36 in Panchagarh of Bangladesh.
Under the agreement, India will hand over 111 enclaves measuring 17,160 acres of land with a population of over 37,369 to Bangladesh and take over 51 enclaves covering an area of 7,110 acres with a population of nearly 14,090, according to officials

. - See more at: http://newagebd.net/118818/21-injured-as-police-attack-protesters/#sthash.dA4vpbnL.dpuf