Protesters charged with attempted murder

Protesters came out in numbers on Friday to demand the reinstatement of the Lady Justice statue at the Supreme Court premises. They gathered near the Raju sculpture on Dhaka University campus and began marching towards the Supreme Court. Later in the day however, in a show of extreme high-handedness and utter lack of respect for the constitutional right of citizens to peaceful assembly, law enforcers filed a case against 140-150 protesters charging them with attempted murder and "carrying lethal weapons". According to onlookers, including reporters of this daily who were present at the scene, protesters were not even seen to be carrying sticks, bricks or stones, let alone lethal arms.

Apart from the fact that it is wholly unclear as to what the "lethal weapons" the police are referring to are, and that only 10-12 people were said to have remained after the police fired tear gas and sprayed water at them, the grounds on which more than 100 protesters have been charged with attempted murder are outrageous. If anything, this seems like an outright attempt to crush a peaceful protest through police action and legal harassment especially when eyewitness accounts and media reports clearly suggest that protesters did not possess lethal weapons.

A charge as serious as attempted murder cannot be arbitrarily handed out in any civilised society. An independent investigation needs to be carried out immediately into the case to find out whether there is any validity to these charges and to exact the details of the disproportionate amount of force used by the police. We must remember that freedom of assembly is one of the most fundamental rights of citizens living in any democracy and any action that prevents citizens from exercising this right freely is unacceptable.