ZCZC
BSS-06
PM-PRIYA-SEDITION
PM disapproves immediate legal step against Priya
DHAKA, July 21, 2019 (BSS) – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has disapproved
a planned government initiative to expose Priya Saha to sedition charges
ahead of obtaining her explanation about her comments during an interaction
with US president Donald Trump, road transport minister Obaidul Quader said
here today.
“The Prime Minister last night sent me a message (from UK) saying no legal
action was required to be initiated hastily,” Quader, also the general
secretary of ruling Awami League, told newsmen at Bangabandhu International
Conference Center (BICC).
But he said Saha must make a public statement explaining what actually she
wanted to tell Trump.
Quader said Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque was set to
lodge a sedition case against Saha but he already conveyed him the premier’s
message and talked to law minister Anisul Huq and home minister Asaduzzaman
Khan Kamal as well in this regard.
Quader’s comments came a day after he said a process was underway to try
Priya Saha on sedition charges as her allegation was “absolutely false”.
The government, however, responded immediately with a foreign ministry
statement calling Saha’s comments “blatant lies” as she made a complain to
Trump claiming minority communities in Bangladesh were being persecuted.
The foreign ministry suspected that she was led by an “ulterior motive”
while the home minister said “we will certainly ask her (about the remarks)
when she returns” from the United States.
Quader yesterday also said that as a Bangladeshi national, she made
“false, purposeful and treasonous remarks”.
Hours ahead of Quader’s comments, two lawyers filed in their private
capacities separate cases against Priya Saha at Dhaka’s Chief Metropolitan
Magistrate Court on sedition charges for maligning Bangladesh making false
allegations.
The court recorded deposition of one of the complainants saying it would
pass an order on his petition later today, when it was also scheduled to hear
the second near identical petition.
Asked for comments about the cases filed by the two lawyers, Quader said
the law of the country debarred anyone from filing of any sedition case
without government permission and the law minister was expected to take
required steps in that regard.
The law minister, meanwhile, said Saha made utterly false allegation to
gratify her personal desires and she should be ignored but “I think we should
not give so much importance to this Priya Saha”.
“We should highlight the truth and ignore her. I think it is not right to
term such small matters as ‘seditious offence’, but it is up to judiciary and
judges to decide,” he told newsmen on the sidelines of the opening ceremony
of a judges training programme.
He said it was not the Hindu community members alone, “all the people say
that we all live amid communal harmony in Bangladesh”.
“If you go through history, you would find that least number of communal
riots took place in Bangladesh,” he said.
When asked about chances of any group’s backing behind such blatant lies
against the country, the law minister said it was not an impossible
proposition but it was matter of investigation.
An organising secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity
Council (HBCUC), Saha attended a meeting at the White House in Washington DC
recently and a video of the meeting with Trump subsequently went viral on
social media and sparked widespread controversy back home.
She was among five Bangladeshis and two Rohingya refugees the US Embassy
in Dhaka sent to the White House while she also attended a ministerial
meeting on advancing religious freedom hosted by the US Department of State
in the US capital.
In the video Saha was seen identifying herself as a Bangladeshi and
telling Trump that 37 million people of minority groups disappeared from
Bangladesh.
HBCUC, meanwhile, tended to disown Saha’s comments with one of its senior
leaders saying the comments she made were of her own and she did not
represent the Council in the meeting with the US President.
“We are embarrassed . . . the comments she made were her own and not
ours,” HBCUC spokesman Kajal Debnath told BSS.
Debnath added that he believed the remarks she made in her interactions
“with the president of a foreign country in a foreign land is unethical and
unexpected”.
But he said compared to previous governments of Bangladesh, the incumbent
one of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was “much more minority-friendly, and we
(minorities) want to live here amid harmony”.
BSS/MAS/JUB/MHR/AR/ 1438 HRS