CAMPUS VIOLENCE Former student leaders blame partisan student politics
Blaming the party affiliation of student politics for the recent unrest on various campuses of the country, former student leaders said that student politics should be pursued independently for national interests as well as for establishing their rights.
Giving their opinions against banning of student politics, these leaders, now in bigger political roles in the national politics, said that the country’s political parties should stop using student organisations in criminalising politics.
Student politics should uphold its glorious tradition, they said.
The issue came up for discussion after demands for banning student politics following the murder of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology student Abrar Fahad allegedly by activists of the university’s unit of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, student wing of the ruling Awami League.
Talking to New Age, AL presidium member and former vice-president of Dhaka University Central Students Union Tofail Ahmed said that the political parties and their associate student bodies should maintain a distance.
He said that the distance was needed to ensure a check-and-balance in power and misuse of student organisations by political parties.
He said that student politics did not lose its appeal and the student community should raise their voice against injustices in society.
Student leaders should keep away from corruption which has of late tarnished the image of the students, he said, adding that all the student organisations should have amity and be driven by a positive intention to help each other.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party standing committee member and former VP of DU’s Haji Muhammad Mohsin Hall Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain said that people raised the demand for banning student politics form their frustration over the deviation of student organisations form their due role.
He said that as the country was now going through an absence of politics, student organisations, mainly the ruling party-backed one, is busy with looting and exercising their influence.
‘All the political parties, including the ruling one and the opposition ones, have equal responsibility to take back student politics on the proper track,’ he went on.
Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal-JSD president and former DUCSU VP ASM Abdur Rob said that achieving a democratic country or governance system would not be possible without student politics.
‘Student politics would create quality leadership for future politics,’ he said, adding that the party affiliation tarnished the image of student politics.
To ensure the rule of law in society independent student politics as well as free political thinking among the students is a must, he said.
Communist Party of Bangladesh president and former DUCS U VC Mujahidul Islam Selim said that there was no ground for banning student politics as Abrar was not killed for student politics but for the absence of student politics on the BUET campus.
He pointed out that no student organisation but the BCL was active at the BUET as the pro-government student body created obstacles for other student organisations to run their activities on the campus.
He emphasised that student politics in Bangladesh must get back to its old character of working for the welfare of the students, ‘which once made us proud’.
Ruling political parties resorted to the practice of using their student organisations to ensure their supremacy at the universities and colleges of the country as everywhere else, he regretted.
He viewed that such ill practice by the ruling party must end if the campuses were to be made open for all the progressive student organisations.
He further viewed that there was no difference between the demand for banning student politics and the ruling party’s use of their student body.
Nagarik Oikya convener and another former DUCSU VP Mahmudur Rahman Manna opined that the university authorities should ensure free access of all the student organisations to the campuses and immediately hold elections of the university student unions.
He also said that the residential facility should be ensured only for residential students and ‘mass rooms’ in student dormitories should be banned.
He also demanded an announcement declaring the BCL as an anti-student organisation.
Awami League central leader and another former DUCSU VP Akhtaruzzaman said that banning student politics was not the way to improve the image of student politics as it could regain its glory only by way of politics.
He suggested that party affiliation should be removed from the mind-set of the student leaders in the greater interest of student politics as well as of the student society.
Jatiya Party presidium member and former DUCSU general secretary Ziauddin Ahmed Bablu said that the student organisations should work independently as the country’s glorious achievements were made under leadership of student politics.
He observed that student politics went astray as the entire society was polluted due to bad politics.
‘Student politics should function independently to ensure harmony among the different student bodies on the campuses and uphold the national interest,’ he further said.
He also observed that banning student politics would boomerang for politics as a whole as competent national-level politicians emerged from student politics.
On Wednesday, addressing a press conference at the Ganabhaban, prime minister and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina said that nothing happened there to ban student politics.
When a journalist drew the attention of the PM that the BUET students were demanding ban on student politics, she said that the BUET authorities could do that if they wanted.
‘If the BUET thinks so, it can ban student politics on their campus. We will not interfere,’ she said, adding that student politics could not be prohibited following a single incident.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
