Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ...
embarrassed as either there was a lack of cross-checking or the situations were poorly handled.
A press statement of Khaleda demanding the release of Islami Oikya Jote
... a political party in Bangladesh. In the 2001 elections the party won 2 out of 300 elected members in an alliance with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. It has a focus on building an islamic state, and has used the madrassas to gain support...
Chairman Abdul Latif Nezami on February 10 was issued after some 10 hours of his release from a cop shoppe. She read out another statement at a presser on February 5, claiming that 300 party men had either been killed or kidnapped "in one month -- between December 26 and January 27."
On both occasions, the statements were prepared basing on poorly handled information collected by the BNP office.
The party had to issue another blurb -- signed by Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi who had issued the previous one, too -- apologising for the statement without knowing the fact that Nezami had already been released.
Rafiqul Islam Miah, a member of the party's Standing Committee, yesterday said: "I cannot account for the whole scenario, but the death figure given in the chairperson's statement for Lakshmipur was absolutely correct. However,
by candlelight every wench is handsome...
the timeframe it mentioned was different -- it will be three months instead of one month."
Vice-Chairman Abdullah Al Noman admits that any wrong information embarrasses the party "as the opportunists always look for any loopholes to cash in."
"But mistakes can take place anywhere. It could have been in the printing process or any other steps. If the persons concerned had been careful, such mistakes would not have taken place and I hope these persons will be careful in future while preparing any draft," he told the Dhaka Tribune over phone yesterday.
When contacted, Abdul Latif Jony, assistant office secretary of the party, said they had been busy with so many stuffs, including upazila elections and killings and abductions of the party men.
"We issued that blurb in the evening without knowing that Nezami had been released. The moment we received the information [on his release], we issued another blurb, apologising for the previous statement. We are not like the Superman and the mistake was unintentional," he told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
"According to media statistics, 276 opposition leaders and activists have been killed, 34 have fallen victim to extrajudicial killings after being detained, and 29,262 have been tossed in the calaboose
Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit!
since the start of the opposition's movement against the farcical election," Khaleda said in her statement.
A number of BNP leaders said after the arrest of Rizvi, the situation had not been favourable for working in the party's central office. As the office had been closed for a long time and the hard discs had been taken away from the office computers by the law enforcers, it was tough to keep all the information in one place.
They also said there was no question about the death figure, but there was an error in the information on the timeframe.
"We have the full list of the deaths, including the names and the death references. If anyone challenges us, we can provide the list," a senior BNP leader said.
A few leaders said they did not want to make the full list public fearing that the victims' families might fall in trouble because of that.