"My friends and I were four to five yards away from the truck Sheikh Hasina was addressing the rally from," Omar told Outlook. "Then I noticed something coming down like a falling star as it reflected against the sunlight, and a big bang. More came one after the other. I started to run along with the others." Omar remembers hearing people scream for help, interspersed with shouts of, "Is the leader safe?"
Back at the truck, other AW leaders quickly formed a human shield around Sheikh Hasina. She was whisked away to a waiting Mercedes Benz jeep as explosions continued to rock the venue. It was indeed a narrow escape for Sheikh Hasina; she was fired upon, her bodyguard was killed, as were 19 others including AW women’s affairs secretary Ivy Rahman.The explosion caught the country in a rising spiral of violence, and also sharpened the secularist-fundamentalist fight. For the next two days, many cities of Bangladesh, including capital city Dhaka, saw protesters torch vehicles or clash with riot police and paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles troops. The deteriorating security situation prompted popular Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily to remark, "Dhaka is a city of fear."
Amidst condemnation of attacks by the US embassy and Indian envoy Veena Sikri, Hasina said, "I was obviously the target of the attackers. It is a miracle. Almighty Allah saved me." She claimed the ideological difference between her and the ruling Bangladesh National Party (BNP) was the principal motivating factor behind the attack. "The BNP and its main ally, the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, harbour religious bigots. We are against fanaticism while the governing alliance is against secularism," she said.
Local government minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan denies Hasina’s charges. "What benefit can the government derive by killing her? Instead, it (her death) would become a major problem," he says. The Khaleda Zia government has instituted a probe under Justice Jainal Abedin, who has been asked to submit his report in three weeks.
There’s no doubt that the entire political class, in or outside the government, wants Khaleda Zia to stop the bombings that first rocked Bangladesh in 1999. Since then, 15 bomb attacks have claimed 135 lives. Just precisely who they are, no one knows. But the country’s most respected editor, Ataus Samad, wrote, "Our suspicion is that a new group has emerged in the criminal world who may be extremists or fundamentalists, and whose aim is to destabilise the country. They would then grab the opportunity to capture power. If they take power, that will mean the end of democracy and liberal society."
This attack on democracy was the theme of the meeting between foreign minister Morshed Khan and Veena Sikri. As she told Outlook, "Morshed Khan told me that the country is faced with a crisis as the attack was against democracy."
The incident has also become a catalyst for Opposition unity. Already, AW, the left-wing 11-party alliance, the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal and Gonno Forum have come together to launch the "all-party action committee" against fundamentalism. Former president Badruddoza Chowdhury’s Bikalpa Dhara Bangladesh is also expected to join the alliance which, in its first move, held rallies to mourn those who died on August 21. For Friday, 24 hours before this report was written, the committee had slated special prayers by all faiths followed by demonstrations.
