BNP Senior leaders Ruhul Kabir Rizvi on Saturday alleged that their party's leaders and activists are being repressed and deprived of all facilities as prisoners, extremely violating their human rights.
"The current IG Prison has verbally directed all jail authorities to deprive all the prisoners belonging to BNP of all general facilities to appease Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina,” he said.
Speaking at a virtual press briefing, the BNP leader also said the IG Prison has turned the jails across the country into Hitler's gas chamber and concentration camps by resorting to torture and seriously violating the rights of jailed BNP leaders and workers.
“BNP leaders and workers in jails are in distress now due to persecution,” he alleged.
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Rizvi claimed that jailed BNP leaders and activists are not being allowed to go out of cells inside the prisons. “Even, the relatives have been barred from visiting the inmates and giving clothes for them and talking to them over the phone.”
The BNP leader said the prisons are no longer places of real social criminals as those are now filled with BNP leaders and workers since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to power. “So, she is applying there all methods of oppression of fascism. In the prisons, she (Hasina) has appointed officers who are inspired by her ideology.”
He said Sheikh Hasina wants BNP leaders and workers to be harassed, persecuted and tortured in jails as they are persecuted outside before their arrest.
“A terrible persecution continues inside the prisons. This persecution is unprecedented. This oppression cannot be expressed in words. Overenthusiastic officers declared a sort of war against our party prisoners,” Rizvi said.
He strongly condemned and protested against this kind of torture on prisoners and strongly urged the authorities concerned to ensure the justified rights of the prisoners.
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The BNP leader also slammed the government for driving away the family members of the victims of enforced disappearance from Shahbagh and obstructing them from holding a rally in front of the National Museum on the eve of the International Human Rights Day.
"The victims of enforced disappearances and human rights violations cannot speak for themselves. A government of terrible enforced disappearances and crossfire and human rights abuses wants to maintain state power in such a way that no one can say anything against its crimes,” he observed.
Rizvi claimed that the police have arrested more than 175 BNP leaders and activists in the last 24 hours of 5pm on Saturday.
He also said their party’s 20,665 leaders and activists have been arrested since the last week of October this year.