Staff Reporter :
The United States has called upon the government to release all the political prisoners who have been detained for merely expressing dissent voices.
They further stated that the UN has been closely monitoring the case of Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus, a dear friend of the United Nations.
Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, made the remarks during a briefing in the UN headquarters on Wednesday.
A journalist asked the spokesperson that over 25,000 opposition party members were arrested in Bangladesh before the sham election on January 7 and 13 of such members had died in custody and only a few were released due to international pressures.
Will you call for the release of the rest of the prisoners?
“We have been very consistent, and we continue to call the release of all those who have been detained from merely expressing themselves peacefully,” he said.
Earlier, the United States also urged the government to release the political prisoners and open the political space for the opposition.
Different international organisations including the UN and the US highly criticised the mass arrest of the opposition members of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) before the January 7 election.
BNP and some other opposition political parties boycotted the election as their demand for holding the poll under a caretaker government has not been fulfilled.
The ruling Awami League was adamant they would not budge an inch from the provisions of the Constitution and the election would be held under the partisan government.
Following such a tussle of political standoff, the government before the election was highhanded and arrested over 25,000 opposition members, what BNP claims, across the country.
Cases after cases were filed against them and used these tools to arrest the BNP leaders.
Recently some of the top leaders of BNP including its Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and presidium member Mirza Abbas have obtained bail and were released after about three months.
Soon after walking out of the jail, these BNP leaders said that they would continue their movement to topple the government.
Mirza Abbas, however, said that they need the leaders and workers who are behind bars to expedite their movement. The workers should be released at any cost, he said.
The release of the opposition members has also been echoing in the headquarters of the UN and the US.
Meanwhile, the US has also been talking about the Yunus issue and urged the government not to harass the Nobel Laureate.
Regarding the case of Dr Yunus, the spokesperson on Wednesday said, “Our country team in Bangladesh continues to follow that case very closely. Prof Yunus is a dear friend of the United Nations throughout his career.”
He further said, “I think his work has been critical to the development work we do today.”
A labour court recently sentenced Dr Yunus to jail for the violation of labour court. Currently he has been on bail.
But Dr Yunus has been facing a barrage of issues regarding his other institutions. He recently in a press conference said that his institutions have been occupied by some quarters unlawfully.
