Opinion: A dangerous precedent

In what appears to be yet another show of false bravado and power, a group of Awami League men allegedly assaulted a school headmaster on January 24, because he refused to endorse their candidate as a teacher of his school. 

According to The Daily Star reports, around eight to ten men, led by Awami League leader Abu Siddique, stormed into Manoranjon Roy’s, headmaster of Haridev Doyez Uddin High School in Haridev village, Lalmonirhat, office and started attacking him with sticks and iron rods. Abu Siddique had earlier tried to convince the headmaster to apparently recruit, his relative, as the computer science teacher of the school, but Roy repeatedly refused to bow down to the pressure. Siddique had in fact earlier approached Nurul Huda Mandol, president of the school managing committee, who also refused point blank to hire anyone based on anything else but merit. Thus, in an effort to scare Roy into yielding to their illegal demands, the AL man brutally beat up Roy and also some students who were trying to protect their headmaster. Siddique has apparently gone into hiding, and even though police raided the houses of the other alleged assaulters, they have yet been unable to arrest anyone.

This incident, as is common knowledge, was not the first time ruling party men attacked teachers with impunity.

In September 2015, members of Bangladesh Chhatra League assaulted teachers of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology during the teachers’ pre-schedule demonstration to stop VC Aminul Haque Bhuian from entering his office. At least ten teachers were injured following the attack while Students Welfare Advisor Professor Rashed Talukder and Proctor Professor Quamruzzaman Chowdhury were allegedly witnessing the whole incident at a distance, unwilling to do anything to restrain the perpetrators of the assault.

In what quickly became international news, Shyamal Kanti Bhakta, headmaster of a school in Narayanganj, was made to hold his ears while performing squats in the presence of an AL lawmaker, before being beaten up by a mob in May 2016. The miscreants later attempted to give a communal twist to their crime by alleging that Bhakta had insulted Islam and thus, deserved the punishment meted out to him – allegations that were proven false in subsequent investigations.

In August 2016, Shamsul Alam, headmaster of a school in Kushtia, was beaten up by a group of local Jubo League and BCL activists for submitting the names of the school’s managing committee members without consulting them. When locals and other teachers tried to rescue the headmaster from their wrath, the ruling party men confined him to his office, pressurising him to sign a paper containing names of their nominations for the committee. 

Earlier this month, a central leader of BCL allegedly assaulted Tanjim Uddin Khan, a teacher of Dhaka University, for protesting the leader’s bad behaviour and offensive language against a young canteen worker of IBA. 

Time and again members of the ruling party, especially those belonging to its students’ wing, have used violence to show off their influence and their blatant disregard for the law and order system of the country. It’s almost as if they are assured that once they become members of the ruling party, they will be able to get away with almost anything. Their position, thus, becomes a way for them to exert their influence to get their personal work done, to rake in profits through brute force and fear. While we hope that this is not true and believe that such behaviour will get due attention from the highest authority in our government, this persistent trend of assaulting teachers has us very worried. What example are we setting for our young ones when they witness firsthand members of the ruling party being given free rein to attack their teachers as and when they please? What does it say about our State, our justice system, and our law enforcing agencies that turn a blind eye when teachers, who were once considered second only to parents, are treated with such humiliation time after time after time? Are we ready to sacrifice the dignity of our teachers for the sake of a few entitled, violent men who brandish the name of the ruling party whenever they carry out their nefarious activities, in effect tarnishing the government’s image in the national and global arena? It’s time that the highest authority of our government takes a serious look into this issue to ensure us that our government is on our side, on the side of our teachers, rather than on the side of a few miscreants who are giving their own party a bad name.