A Bangladesh mayor who refused to permit a mural depict-ing Prime Minister Sheikh Has-ina’s father on religious grounds was arrested Wednesday, police said.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was in-dependent Bangladesh’s first leader and since his daughter took power in 2009, authorities have erected more than 1,000 murals and monuments to vener-ate him.
Scores of people have also been charged for defaming him under the country’s notorious internet laws, which rights groups say have been used by Hasina to si-lence dissent.
Abbas Ali, the mayor of western Rajshahi city, found himself in the spotlight last month after an audio clip of his comments against a proposed Mujib mural went viral.
“This is not correct according to Islamic sharia,” he had said.
“That’s why I won’t keep it. I will build everything as it’s planned, except for this last part.”
Islamic traditions forbid depic-tions of people in murals or stat-ues as part of the religion’s re-strictions against idolatry.
His comments triggered protests in his home town. The mayor ini-tially claimed the clip was fake, but later apologised on Facebook and fled town. Police arrested Ali from a hotel in the capital Dhaka on Wednes-day, spokesman Khandaker Al Moin told AFP. “He admitted he made the com-ment. He was absconding in dif-ferent hotels in Dhaka since No-vember 23. We had information that he’s planning to flee the country,” he added.
The case follows last month’s sacking by Hasina of Zahagir Alam, the mayor of the industrial city of Gazipur, after he allegedly defamed Rahman.Both Alam and Ali were mem-bers of Hasina’s ruling Awami League party.
Mujib led his country to inde-pendence from Pakistan in 1971 after a horrific nine-month war that Bangladesh says killed as many as three million and dis-placed many more.
He was assassinated four years later along with most of his fam-ily.
Under his daughter Hasina, 74, activists say the human rights situation in Bangladesh has dete-riorated sharply, with clamp-downs on free expression that have seen hundreds of journalists and activists arrested.—AFP
