Former National Citizen Party (NCP) leader Tasnim Jara has criticised Jamaat-e-Islami activists over alleged attempts to obstruct the burial of freedom fighter Manik Pashari in Pirojpur, questioning what the party would do if it came to power.
In a Facebook post on Monday, Jara accused Jamaat of invoking justice, human rights and dignity for its own leaders while denying them to others.
She said Pashari’s family had faced distress after his death, adding that Jamaat activists had opposed his burial in Pirojpur despite the family’s wish to bury him at their homestead.
Jara said people in Bangladesh traditionally come forward to help bury the dead, bringing spades and other materials without being asked.
But after Pashari, 87, died around 10am on Saturday, his family had to wait anxiously throughout the day as local Jamaat activists held rallies and announced over loudspeakers and Facebook that he would not be allowed to be buried in Pirojpur, she wrote.
Pashari’s daughter Simu Akter told local journalists that a grave dug at their home was filled in by some people.
She and her aunts then dug another grave, but could find no one else willing to help because of fears that the situation might deteriorate.
“On that day, the spades that should have been in the hands of neighbourhood boys were in the hands of the dead man’s daughters and sisters,” Jara wrote.
Pashari was eventually buried after midnight in the grave dug by his family, under police protection. No one from outside the family attended apart from members of the administration, she said.
Jara resigned from the NCP, where she was a senior joint member secretary, after the party formed an alliance with Jamaat before the February election.
She later ran for the Dhaka-9 seat as an independent candidate.
In her post, she said Jamaat activists had spoken as if they owned the land and could decide whether someone could be buried in their own family graveyard.
She compared their stance with the slogan once directed at Jamaat-Shibir supporters, saying the party should understand the injustice of denying someone a place based on political identity.
Jara also referred to comments by an assistant secretary of Jamaat’s Pirojpur district unit, who allegedly called Pashari a fake freedom fighter and opposed giving him a guard of honour or allowing his burial in the district.
After the burial, the same leader said Jamaat did not engage in the politics of the dead, she wrote.
Jara said questions about Pashari’s status as a freedom fighter could be raised and examined by state institutions or courts, but should not be settled by preventing his burial.
She added that Jamaat had opposed Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, yet its activists were now seeking to decide who qualified as a freedom fighter, who deserved state honours and where someone could be buried.