Earlier, GM Quader vowed to press on with Saturday’s rally, despite risks of attacks

TDS Desk

Students have called counter demonstrations across the country to thwart Jatiya Party’s rally in the capital on Saturday, after the party’s leadership vowed to press on with the rally “defying risks to their lives.”

On Friday afternoon, student leader and Chhatra Odhikar Parishad President Bin Yamin Molla said students, workers  and other people would hold “mass resistance programme” in front of all the Jatiya Party offices across the country to foil what they claimed “covert attempts to revive Awami League.”

Molla announced the demonstrations under the banner of “Anti-Fascist Student-Worker-People” at a press conference held at TSC of University of Dhaka (DU).

Molla also called on the Dhaka Metropolitan Police to avoid permitting Jatiya Party’s rally for preventing “violence and bloodshed.”

He also called on the interim government to ban the political activities of Awami League and Jatiya Party, warning of movement even against the government if the demand is not met.

The Awami League-led government imposed a de-facto authoritarian rule over the country for more than 15 years till its ouster in a mass uprising on 5 August this year, and Jatiya Party remained its strongest political ally in the parliament during the tenure.

A few hours earlier, Jatiya Party Chairman GM Quader said the party would hold its preannounced rally in front of the party central office in Kakrail on Saturday, even if there are high risks to the lives of activists.

GM Quader said that though his party formed an alliance with Awami League in 2008, the party never supported the misdeeds of Sheikh Hasina, the chief of Awami League.

Furthermore, in January 2024, the party was forced by Awami League to take part in rigged national elections.

And yet, efforts are on to brand Jatiya Party as an “ally of fascists,” a practice the party would protest against in its Saturday rally.