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The house no 32 in Bangladesh’s Dhanmondi is the residence of Bangladesh founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.
Onlookers gather after protesters stormed Bangabandhu Memorial Museum, the residence of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, independent Bangladesh’s first president and father of the country’s ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, at Dhanmondi 32 in Dhaka. (IMAGE: AFP)
The Bangladesh interim government blamed Sheikh Hasina, the nation’s prime minister-in-exile, for the vandalism and arson that took place in her father’s home in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi.
Dhanmondi’s House No 32 is a national memorial of Dhaka as it is the residence of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh.
The museum and former home of Hasina’s late father and also Bangladesh’s first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was set on fire last year during the student-led revolution that ended her 15 years of rule.
A report by news agency AFP said that government-owned construction vehicles were used to create havoc in other cities of Bangladesh where symbols associated with Hasina and her father were attacked.
The report also said that at some instances security forces stood by and watched and protesters took control.
However, the revolution was hijacked by Islamists and rivals of Sheikh Hasina’s party Awami League and the interim government has failed to stem violence against Awami supporters and religious minority communities and tribal people.
Late Wednesday, six months to the day since Hasina fled by helicopter to old ally India on August 5, crowds carrying hammers and metal rods began beating down the walls of the building in the capital Dhaka.
At least two people, accused of being members of Awami League, were beaten by the crowd, according to witnesses.
Protests were triggered in response to reports that 77-year-old Hasina — who has defied an arrest warrant to face trial in Dhaka for massacres — would appear in a Facebook broadcast from exile.
“The recurrence of such incidents can be avoided only if Sheikh Hasina, against whom the government has issued warrants and who is accused of crimes against humanity, refrains from making speeches,” a government statement read.
“Hasina… insulted the people who sacrificed their lives by making irrelevant, absurd, and hateful comments”.
Dhaka’s foreign ministry said it wrote to New Delhi demanding Hasina be barred from making “false, fabricated, and incendiary statements” while she is their guest.
On Thursday morning, diggers were being used to knock down the remaining fire-blackened walls.
Protesters also vandalised and torched other houses across the country linked to Hasina, including an arson attack on the Dhaka house of Hasina’s late husband.
Prothom Alo, the largest Bengali daily, reported crowds used government-owned excavators to smash down a building owned by Hasina’s family in the city of Khulna.
In the western city of Kushtia, protesters vandalised the house of a leader of Hasina’s Awami League party, Mahbubul Alam Hanif.
In Chittagong, protesters held a torch procession and smashed a mural of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Security forces stood by allowing protesters to storm the buildings.
Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), a leading Bangladeshi human rights organisation, condemned the violence.
- Location :
Dhaka, Bangladesh
