‘Jamaat ban bill coming’

Jute and Textile Minister Abdul Latif Siddiqui said on Tuesday that a bill seeking a ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing would be placed in the current parliament.

Siddiqui, also a Presidium Member of the ruling Awami League, said the bill was being drafted.
Deputy Leader of Parliament Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury backed his comment and said the demand for banning the party, which officially opposed the creation of Bangladesh as an independent country in 1971, was indeed of many political parties.

“But now it has become a national demand,” she said.

“We are discussing the issue, a process is on. It will take some time,” she said.

The leaders made the statement when they joined Tuesday’s three-minute silence at the Central Shaheed Minar demanding execution of Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Molla and other war criminals.

Millions of people across the country joined their hands and expressed their solidarity with the Shahbagh movement by holding a three-minute silence at 4pm on Tuesday to press for execution of all war criminals.

On Monday, the protesters from the centre stage at Shahbagh, named as Ganajagaran Manch, called upon the countrymen to stand three minutes in silence.

Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim, also a Presidium Member of the Awami League, said a national consensus was needed to ban the party.