Creating panic before elections are BNP’s old tactics

It is an old tactic of BNP-Jamaat to carry out arson attacks and killing missions against the Awami League across the country whenever an election approaches. They try to prevent people from going to polling stations during the election through subversive activities, as these miscreants are always skeptical about being elected by the people's votes. Therefore, these BNP-Jamaat extortionists and terrorists try to seize power by creating panic before the polls and rigging ballots.

According to Janakantha on September 8, 2001, BNP started killing Awami League leaders, centring the general elections in October. On September 7, BNP terrorists demolished and set fire to 10 election offices of the Awami League in the Sutrapur area of the capital. Locals said that the BNP activists seriously injured at least 20 Awami League leaders in the barbaric attack.

On September 7, BNP cadres also attacked the leaders and activists of the Awami League's affiliate organizations in Pangsha Upazila of Rajbari. BNP terrorists hacked upazila Jubo League president Faridul Hasan Wadud. They also started attacking, looting, and torturing the houses of Awami League leaders and activists throughout the district for two days.

On the other hand, Khaleda Zia nominated Razakar Kamaruzzaman from Sherpur for the Jamaat-BNP alliance. As a result, freedom fighters, even from the BNP, boycotted him, but Khaleda Zia ignored their calls and supported Jamaat leader Kamaruzzaman. Since then, Kamaruzzaman, the commander of Al Badr in the Greater Mymensingh region during the Liberation War, has spent a lot of money and made the election atmosphere chaotic. Locals said Razakar Kamaruzzaman also carried out subversive activities in Sherpur while he was the commander of Badr. People have not yet forgotten the terrible memory of his brutality in 1971.

Meanwhile, the conflict between BNP and Jamaat also ensued over the share of money of illegal money of Kamaruzzaman. Kamaruzzaman, the notorious killer of Razakar, made the atmosphere volatile. They even brought Bangabandhu's killers to the election campaign to carry out anti-Awami propaganda.

On the other hand, the BNP-Jamaat alliance also used eight non-government organizations (NGOs) to spread propaganda against the pro-liberation forces. Among them, Khaleda Zia nominated the chiefs of two NGOs, run by close relatives of the killers of Bangabandhu and four national leaders. They planned to deploy garment workers, sponsored by these NGOs, including Odhikar, Democratic Watch, FEMA, the Khan Foundation, Bangladesh Human Rights, and Liberty Movement, etc., as election observers to keep polling stations under their grip.

Even the Hawa Bhaban racket, led by Tarique Rahman, contracted the country’s top terrorists, both in Dhaka and elsewhere, to work in favor of the BNP during the election. In return, they promised to give them political shelter. Later, BNP MP Nasiruddin Pintu, Mirza Abbas, SA Khaleque, and Salahuddin Ahmed divided Dhaka’s mafia world into four parts to look after terrorist groups.