On 6 October 2019, Abrar Fahad was once taken from his room no 1011 at BUET’s Sher-e-Bangla Corridor by plenty of Chhatra League leaders. They additionally took his two cellphones and pc pc.
Abrar was once a 2d-year scholar on the Department of Electrical and Digital Engineering. What came about afterwards is written in historical past and known to all: he was once brutally beaten to death.
Even supposing alternative incidents of enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings came about beneath the fascist regime of the Awami League; just a few of them left an model on the final nation and carried massive significance in the political landscape.
Such was once the abolish of Abrar Fahad. It uncovered the brutality and oppressive nature of the Awami League regime to its fullest.
Actions spread in some unspecified time in the future of the country. College students and voters were furious as they raised their narrate against the killing. Partitions were covered with graffiti and protests took space on every campus.
“At that time, none of us can also acquire imagined that my brother’s death would shake every person so deeply. These incidents had nearly turn out to be regular and customary abet then. Honestly, I deem this was once phase of a better thought by the Almighty,” Abrar Fahad’s younger brother, Abrar Faiyaj, who’s now a sophomore on the same institution, informed The Industry Long-established.
A critical characteristic of Abrar Fahad’s abolish is that it revealed the oppressive face of the fascist regime in all its dimensions.
Within the commence, it uncovered the Chhatra League as a terrorist neighborhood disguised as a scholar organisation, and a key machine of the Awami League’s oppression. “They were so brutal to my brother that there was once no strategy to quilt it up. Every person titillating with this incident is a known Chhatra League face,” Faiyaj acknowledged.
Abrar Fahad was once killed for ‘suspected involvement with Shibir’. This was once one more ploy the Awami League light indiscriminately – labeling its critics as Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir or Islamists to review out to elaborate disappearances, killings, detention, and torture of of us.
His abolish additionally revealed the gloomy face of scholar politics in universities in customary.
“Pupil politics as practised on campuses can also now now not continue fancy this; Abrar Fahad’s sacrifice made it certain that it was once high time we reformed campus politics, genuinely the final country,” acknowledged Arif Sohel, Jahangirnagar College Coordinator of the Anti-discrimination College students Circulate.
Meghmallar Bosu, President of the Dhaka College unit of Bangladesh College students’ Union (BSU), believes that thru this abolish, Abrar Fahad was a image of command against imperialism of any country, in conjunction with India.
Abrar was once killed thanks to his thought on Indian hegemony and the Awami government’s submissive diplomatic members of the family with them. It demonstrated how stunning the Awami government was once when it came to India.
In plenty of Facebook posts, he criticised the bilateral agreements signed during outdated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s four-day legit talk to to Unique Delhi. He strongly criticised granting India access to the Mongla Port, the withdrawal of water from the Feni River, and the export of LPG from Bangladesh.
The incident concurrently uncovered the substandard suppose of freedom of expression in the country. Below the fascist regime, freedom of speech and expression was once successfully silenced.
Since 2009, the Awami League government has consistently enacted and amended diverse repressive guidelines and imposed them to interfere with voters’ freedom of expression. They misused the Anti-Terrorism Act-2009 and the Digital Security Act-2018 as instruments of oppression.
“In a democratic country, it will ought to acquire been customary for a citizen to be conscious about and keep in touch out about nationwide interests. His abolish revealed how ‘self sufficient’ we genuinely are!” Sohel acknowledged.
Even after his death, Abrar Fahad stays a image of consciousness and a narrate of command. Every time questions arise in regards to the link between India’s dam openings and the excessive floods in the country, of us be conscious his phrases.
Now not too long ago, his title additionally came up in discussions about Sheikh Hasina’s futile hilsa diplomacy with India.
Arif Sohel believes that thru the sacrifice of Abrar Fahad, the fascists were in some map defeated each psychologically and culturally.
Faiyaj believes that his brother’s incident gave of us their narrate abet as they witnessed that if the final nation can unite against an injustice, it’s far feasible to face up to any form of low.
Indeed, the winds of revolution fueled the mass riot against dictatorship.
“I feel Abrar Fahad passed the baton of revolution to Abu Sayed. To me, Abrar is an inseparable phase of the July revolution,” acknowledged Asad Mahdi, Abrar Fahad’s batchmate from Notre Dame Faculty.
He acknowledged how the nation observes the anniversary of his martyrdom this year can also replicate the future political spirit of Bangladesh.
A vital title of this year’s anti-discrimination scholar movement is Akhtar Hossen, the Social Welfare Secretary of DUCSU (Dhaka College Central College students’ Union). Every year, he takes diverse initiatives in memory of Abrar Fahad.
He declared in a Facebook post that they’d rebuild the ‘Eight pillars against aggression’ on 7 October this year in his memory.
It is value noting that in 2020, on the first anniversary of Abrar’s death, thru Akhtar’s initiative, the memorial at Palashi intersection was once prepare beneath the banner of ‘Abrar Fahad Memorial Council’.
Alternatively, it was once demolished within 24 hours by the fascist regime. A BBC Bangla document states that the event was once destroyed by the Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC).
Even in 2022, Chhatra League men attacked a command rally introduced out to peep Abrar Fahad’s third death anniversary. Now not much less than 12 activists of Bangladesh Chhatra Odhikar Parishad were injured in the unexpected attack, TBS reported.
However can these violent efforts erase the title of Abrar Fahad from our collective memory?
He’ll live in our ideas and reminiscences— eternally. As he himself wrote on his Facebook bio, “Ananta mohakale mor jatra oshim mohakasher onte”— which map “My scramble is against eternity, thru the endless pickle”.
Has justice been served to Abrar Fahad? Now not but. A entire of 25 participants were accused in the abolish case. In 2021, the court docket sentenced 20 of them to death, whereas 5 obtained existence imprisonment. Amongst them, 22 are currently in penal advanced, and three are restful absconding.
In a country where justice is a rare thing, this verdict was once somewhat of satisfactory and unparalleled. Now, the wait is to peep whether the culprits genuinely receive the punishment.
Faiyaj shared the update of the case with us announcing, “The job of appeal hearing is ongoing. The verdicts are delivered in step with the case sequence, but the arrangement has been delayed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Closing year, we spoke with a senior court docket legit and realized that this might perchance well maybe snatch more time for the verdicts to be implemented.”
“To be trusty, on the 2d, the federal government needed to produce a rapid and satisfactory verdict from the lower court docket to do their face, and that’s the reason precisely what they did,” he added.
“We fabricate now not have confidence the broken judicial system backed by the Awami League. It is time to peep if the verdict desires to be reviewed. If now not, then it’ll also objective restful be implemented as early as likely,” concluded Arif Sohel.
