Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam spoke at the launching ceremony of a compilation book titled "Droher Graffiti: Chobisher Gono Obhyutthan" at the Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka today. Photo: BSS

DHAKA, Feb 08, 2025 (BSS) - Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam said Awami League, which was ousted through massive popular uprising, is carrying out a smear campaign against Chief Adviser Prof Dr Muhammad Yunus.

“Millions of dollars are being spent to depict Professor Yunus as a militant leader. Indian media is involved in this campaign. They are trying to convince the whole world that what happened in Bangladesh was not actually a mass uprising rather a big conspiracy,” he said.

Shafiqul Alam was addressing the launching ceremony of a compilation book titled “Droher Graffiti: Chobisher Gono Obhyutthan” authored by Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) Deputy Chief News Editor GM Rajib Hossain at the Jatiya Press Club here today.

Shafiqul Alam described Sheikh Hasina as the “mother of thieves and queen of enforced disappearances” saying she and her cohorts want to challenge the narrative of Bangladesh.

“They claimed that 3,000 policemen were killed and they portrayed Professor Yunus as the leader of militants in their websites,” Alam said.

“This is a very well orchestrated propaganda as Indian media is also involved while Hasina's oligarchs are spending millions of dollars behind this,” he claimed.

The press secretary alleged that Sheikh Hasina and her allies want to reverse history as they are trying to create a reverse narrative of the July revolution. 

“So now our main task is to keep in record every incident of the July revolution,” he said.

Shafiqul Alam said there has been an attempt to change the history of Bangladesh. In the 15 years of the Awami League government, research and writing on the 1974 famine have not been published. 

He said photo journalist Aftab Ahmed, who took the picture of Basanti, died mysteriously but none investigated the reason of his death.

As many as 30,000 people died at the hands of the Rokkhi Bahini formed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Shafiqul Alam said adding for the last 15 years of Awami League rule, there has been an attempt to erase history replacing it with new one.

“The main tool of exploitation is to forget history. Now the oppressors claimed to be a victim of oppression,” he said.

Referring to his family members, Shafiqul Alam said his brother had to stand in front of the ration shop for days and people used to come to their homes for rice gruel and he himself ate rice gruel during Sheikh Mujib’s rule, yet it is said in the last 15 years that Sheikh Mujib's rule was great.

He said Bangladesh has a major setback in presenting its history due to lack of proper documentation. “If you go through the old newspapers of post independence period, you won’t find enough documents to learn the true history of Mujib regime.”

Heavily criticizing Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s economic policy, Shafiqul Alam said, “It was actually a suicidal and fragile economic policy. But the state of the economy was not depicted properly in the media.

“Documentation even for the Liberation War was also poor, and thus, there were scopes for a robber to present himself as a freedom fighter and even become a cabinet minister,” he said.

Shafiqul Alam underscored the need for maintaining proper documentation on the July uprising through preserving graffiti and artworks on the movement.  

Noting that Hasina’s AL tortured a chief justice and forced him to leave the country, he said if it’s the case of a chief justice, then anyone can understand about the independence of judiciary during AL regime.

Stating that Sheikh Hasina and associates have smuggled $234 billion dollars from Bangladesh, Shafiqul Alam said 3,500 people were subjected to enforced disappearance during their 15 years rule while 2,000 others were killed during July-August movement. 

“The Shapla Chattar massacre took place during Sheikh Hasina's regime and a terrible massacre also took place after the verdict against Maulana Delwar Hossain Sayedee,” he said.

Shafiqul Alam said, “Now it is our job to highlight the brutality of 15 years through research. We will hold seminars in every campus. We will write the injustices on every wall so that the dictator and its allies cannot come back. We have to do this.”

Those who think the July uprising was a movement of only 21 days are wrong as there is a long history of 15 years struggle. 

“We have to fight another 15 years. If we give any pause for a while, they will try to raise their heads again. We cannot let it happen,” he said.

BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi addressed the event as the chief guest while BSS Managing Director and Chief Editor Mahbub Morshed delivered welcome address.

JPC President Hasan Hafiz, Sammilita Peshajibi Parishad Secretary General and Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists (BFUJ) Secretary General Kader Gani Chowdhury, daily Amar Desh Executive Editor Syed Abdal Ahmed, journalist Kazi Rawnak Hossain and Deputy Secretary and 25th BCS (All Cadre) Forum President Nurul Karim Bhuiyan also spoke.

Junan Nashit, deputy chief news editor of BSS, conducted the event.  

In his welcome address, poet and writer Mahbub Morshed laid emphasis on preserving the artworks and graffiti of the mass-uprising to allow the next generation to know the true history of the movement.

Mahbub Morshed cited from Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera’s  ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,’ where the writer told- “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

“Authoritarian rulers always want to establish their own fabricated narratives denying all counter narratives,” BSS MD said.

“If we want to keep the spirit of July uprising alive for ever, we would have to firmly establish a narrative being imbued with the spirit of the mass movement through conserving artworks and graffiti and penning books, poems and other literary works,” he said.