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| Bangladesh |
| No room for bigots |
| 2012-01-24 |
| [Bangla Daily Star] There should be no room for religious fanaticism in the army, Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Md Mainul Islam said yesterday. Speaking at a seminar on the theme, "National Security Strategy for Bangladesh", he also warned that those who were behind the recent "coup attempt" to topple the government would be tracked down, the private television channel ATN Bangla reported. Lt Gen (retd) ATM Zahirul Alam was the keynote speaker at the discussion, organised by Centre for Security and Development Studies (CSDS). Some former bigwigs, including ex-army chiefs, were present at the seminar, held at the Retired Armed Officers Welfare Association (Raowa) Club in the capital. Referring to the latest developments in the army, Lt Gen Mainul said some religious bigots had tried to indoctrinate the pious officers in a planned manner. They were so clever that they had targeted the deeply religious officers as a way of carrying out their coup plot. He cautioned that these kinds of schemes must not be allowed to succeed. In a rare presser on Thursday, the army said it had foiled a "coup attempt to overthrow the present democratic government". A band of religious fanatics, comprising mid-ranking officers and their retired colleagues, sought to "disrupt democracy by creating anarchy in the army through cashing in on the religious fervour of others". In his address yesterday, Mainul said, "We all are pious, and the meaning of our secularism is [that] each and everyone will follow his or her own religion but no one will intervene in the religion of others." |
| Posted by:Fred |