Organised vested quarters at home and abroad are engaged in a continuous plot to destabilize the country through spreading sensitive propaganda on social media. Their main aim is to tarnish the image of the ruling Awami League, and disrupt the country’s ongoing development work as well, intelligence sources said.
Anti-liberation forces like Jamaat and its student wing Chhatra Shibir, outlawed Islami parties and other vested interest groups, using various social media like facebook, youtube, twitter, instagram have now become desperate to make the country dysfunctional, intelligence sources said.
Besides, a section of leaders and workers of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is also in a nexus with these quarters as they want to push the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government into a troubled situation. A section young people in Bangladesh is attracted to militancy through various interesting and lucrative proposals over the Internet, Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) chief, Monirul Islam, said earlier.
“After the Holey Artisan attack, extremist activities have been on a decline due to a crackdown on militant activities. As there were no major attacks or incidents of violence, everyone thinks extremism and terrorism have been rooted out. However, the threat is still very real,”
“Young people are being attracted to various lucrative packages of militancy groups on the Internet. Those who have no sense of responsibility, less patriotism, or the ones who are weak in ideology, unable to adapt to realities and are mentally weak are being radicalised,” he further mentioned.
The recent Bhola attack incident that erupted following a Facebook post that allegedly demeaned Prophet Muhammad (SM) sparked off huge violence, was predetermined and intended to hatch anti-government conspiracies, and simply intended to destabilize the country and shatter religious harmony.
Under the banner anti-liberation forces, Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Shibir as well as anti-government political party BNP leaders, had planned to kill dozens of senior police officers in Bhola. During the attack, the anti-liberation religious groups, under the banner, Towhidi Muslim Janata, vandalized a Hindu temple. Later, they destroyed houses of local Hindu community people including Rogunath Das, Shanti Ranjan Dey, Rajib Ratan Dey, and Narayan Chandra Dey.
Meanwhile, police headquarters has instructed all operational units to remain alert so that no one can fish in troubled waters misusing the issue of the Bhola incident. Police have already found out about the persons and organizations involved in circulating rumors on Bhola incident.
As part of the ongoing stern action against the rumor mongers, Rabiul Alam was caught spreading pictures of senior police officers via social media using a series of religious hate posting. He was arrested by police in Laldighi area of Chattogram city. Through his posting, he tried to instigate other police personnel to believe in what he had posted and act accordingly. During the initial interrogation, he admitted to spreading rumors through social media at the direction of his guru Zakir in Hathazari area.
From the evening of Sunday (October 20th), posts of senior police officers, including CMP Commissioner Mahbubur Rahman, were spread through social media. A B M Najmus Sakib researcher and lecturer at the Department of Criminology of Dhaka University said, “In the upcoming days, dependency on social media and the internet will increase , in addition we have to be aware of rumors. For this, training workshops and awareness are a must to tackle these irascible circumstances.”
Monitoring of social media by law enforcers and key persons of respective areas should be enhanced against false information. And those who use public sentiment against law enforcers should be brought under surveillance, because law enforcers are not enemies of the public, he added.
Mentioning the hate speech over social media to subvert peace and harmony of common people, Najmus Sakib said, we have found, most of the time on internet, hate speech against the government and noted personalities were spread from factions abroad. For this, legal framework and punishment parameter also needs to be defined with the by-law.
In this regard, crime analyst and Researcher Enamul Haque further said, “Religion is not the sole factor for the rise in extremism and rumors on the internet. Different factors, such as social, political, economic inequality and values are associated with it,”