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The August 5 changed life forever--- for some it is a new dawn, a fresh beginning on course of the cherished destiny but for others it is not so promising. Among the latter, leaving aside the political elements, there are people who joined the movement or had no part in it fell victim to the mindless violence. Quite a few families have lost their only earning members or the moving delight of their eyes, the innocent child, killed by stray bullets. The life of the members of such families will never be the same as long as they live.
Following the fall of the Sheikh Hasina's regime on August 5, lawlessness was let loose in certain cases without considering its consequences. Since the police themselves were busy saving their skin, the anti-social elements became hyperactive in certain areas. They took advantage of the vacuum of law enforcement created by the police's voluntary withdrawal from its routine duty. In one such case, 60 families were evicted, as reported by an English contemporary, from their Ashrayan village---cluster homes built to shelter the landless and homeless. Not only were the poor and vulnerable people driven out of their Ashrayan homes, all their belongings were looted before reducing their homes to rubbles on August 8 last.
The armed evictors claimed that the land on which the Ashrayan project was built belonged to them and it had been recorded as khas land mistakenly. But the upazila nirbahi officer (UNO) of Pabna Sadar contradicted this claim, saying that the project was legally established and no one had claimed it his or her private property. Even if the land was disputed as one of the claimants contended, do they have any right to evict and bring down the houses built by fund from public exchequer, let alone loot the belongings of the poor and vulnerable people? Those people have once again turned landless and homeless. Living in makeshift huts on the embankment, they had to endure the bitter cold of the winter. How their life and livelihoods were shattered can easily be imagined.
These lowest of the low social class of people are not a party to the dispute. Just because the Ashrayan projects were taken all across the country by the ousted regime, those cannot be targets of anti-social attacks. Even if the lands were disputed, there are legal methods to be followed for eviction. One cannot use muscle power. If the court is satisfied that the land belonged to some private party, it serves the eviction order and then it follows the due process. Here the claimants of the property have taken law into their own hands and resorted to extreme violence and also committed a crime by looting the poor people's belongings.
The anti-discrimination movement was not only about fixing anomalies in the recruitment process for employment, it was also aimed at narrowing the widening social disparities and inequalities. Much as Hasina may be maligned for her autocratic and fascist way of governance, the Ashrayan project surely did a world of good for the poor and landless who had no roof on their heads.
It is not the inhabitants of Ashrayan homes in Pabna alone, who had suffered such attacks; reports of similar forcible eviction still pour in from different areas. According to a report carried in a Bangla contemporary, an organising secretary of a political party and his followers in Char Fashion, Bhola demolished houses before taking away the belongings inside at dead of night. The Tahshildar of the local union filed a case with the police station there, accusing five by names and four others not known.
Why are the most vulnerable of society becoming target of such attacks? This is a betrayal of the guiding spirit of the July-August uprising. These lowest of the low in society need more support if the nation is serious about gradually narrowing and ultimately eliminating discriminations and disparities from all walks of life.