Dhaka: Bangladesh’s interim government plans to proclaim an ordinance to protect from prosecution the 2024 “July warriors” whose violent street protests toppled then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime, media reports said on Tuesday.
The mass circulation Prothom Alo and Ittefaq newspapers said that initiatives were underway to proclaim the ordinance to protect the “July warriors” from the law.
According to reports, a meeting chaired by Home Adviser Lt. Gen. (retd.) Jahangir Alam Chowdhury on Monday decided to proclaim the instance of one such law enacted by the post-independence Awami League government for the freedom fighters of the 1971 Liberation War.
The move follows a meeting chaired by Home Adviser Lt. Gen. (retd.) Jahangir Alam Chowdhury on Monday.
Officials discussed modelling the ordinance on a law enacted by the post-independence Awami League government for the freedom fighters of the 1971 Liberation War.
Two recent incidents are said to have prompted the government’s initiative. On 25 December, law enforcement arrested July warrior Tahrima Jannat Surovi on charges of extortion and blackmail.
She was later granted bail by a local court in Gazipur on the outskirts of Dhaka. In another case, police in northeastern Habiganj arrested Mahdi Hassan on Saturday after he, along with a crowd, went to a local police station and threatened the officer in charge.
A Habiganj court freed him on bail the following day.
Following the arrests, activists of the Students against Discrimination (SAD), the group that spearheaded the July Uprising and from which the National Citizen Party later emerged, staged massive protests in Dhaka, Habiganj, and other locations.
They demanded the unconditional release of the arrested leaders and legal protection for the July warriors under a special measure, prompting authorities to take steps to promulgate the ordinance.
