Physician and former National Citizen Party (NCP) leader Tasnim Jara on Monday questioned Jamaat-e-Islami over its obstruction to the burial of freedom fighter Manik Pashari at his homeland in Pirojpur.
“While in opposition, they are preventing someone from being buried at his own homestead. What will they do if all the powers of the state come into their hands?” she said.
Tasnim Jara made the remarks on her verified Facebook page at noon.
Freedom fighter Manik Pashari, the plaintiff in crimes against humanity case filed against late Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delawar Hossain Sayedee, was buried at village Chitolia in Pirojpur Sadar upazila amid tight police security early Sunday, amid hindrance from local Jamaat leaders and activists.
In the post, Jara wrote that Jamaat leaders and activists spoke as if they owned the land when declaring that Manik Pashari would not be allowed to be buried in Pirojpur, as though people needed their permission to be laid to rest in their own family graveyards.
She recalled that Jamaat and Islami Chhatra Shibir were once targeted with the slogan, “Jamaat-Shibir are Razakars (collaborators), leave Bangladesh right now,” and said they should know how unjust such statements were. However, she added, they seemed to have forgotten that injustice even while still in opposition, as soon as they gained some power.
Jara also wrote that Jamaat, as a party, had opposed Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. Yet its leaders and activists were now seeking to decide who was a freedom fighter and who was not, who deserved state honours and where someone could be buried.
“After death, all of a person's accounts are settled. What remains is for Allah to judge,” she wrote, adding that Manik Pashari could not even have his funeral prayer in his own village, while his family was denied the opportunity to seek forgiveness from the villagers.
She accused Jamaat of invoking justice, human rights, due process and human dignity for its own leaders while failing to uphold those principles in its treatment of others, including a deceased person and his grieving family.