Bangladesh: UNICEF calls for ensuring safety and security of teachers

UNICEF Bangladesh has issued a statement expressing deep concern over the recent series of attacks on teachers. UNICEF condemned the attack and called for ensuring the safety and security of teachers calling the attack on teachers an attack on education.

The UNICEF representative in Bangladesh Sheldon Yett said that teachers play a critical role in ensuring children’s right to education. He said attacks on teachers are attacks on education. If we fail to protect teachers from violence, it will be children who ultimately suffer, said UNICEF.

Earlier, the Liberation war Fighters of Bangladesh organized a human chain in the Dhaka University area demanding strict action against the people who attacked teachers over the last two weeks. Calling the attackers as ‘communal terrorists’, it demanded immediate arrest and exemplary punishment to the culprits who attacked teacher Ratan Siddique and killed the teacher Utpal Kumar in Bangladesh recently.

The speakers on the occasion accused Jamaat-e-Islami and the hardline Islamist organization Hefazat-e-Islam of instigating communal hatred to destabilize the country and vitiate the social atmosphere. The acting President of the organization Shaheen Sikder called the communal organizations ‘traders of religion’. He said that they want to turn Bangladesh into a failed state by spreading provocative propaganda against the minorities in the country. He demanded that the government take steps to stop the spread of hatred through religious gatherings called ‘Waz Mehfil’.

A teacher Utpal Kumar was attacked by a 10th-grade student of his school by a cricket stump on June 25 near Savar on the outskirts of capital Dhaka as the teacher had told him not to indulge in eve-teasing. The teacher succumbed to the injuries the next day. In another incident, on June 16 acting principal of the local college in Narail Upazila Swapan Kumar Biswas was garlanded with shoes by some people in connection with a Facebook post by a student. In Dhaka, renowned cultural personality and researcher Prof. Ratan Siddique was attacked on July 1 after a minor altercation in front of his house. Calling it a planned attack, Prof. Siddique’s daughter claimed that he was abused with a communal slur during the attack.

The police initiated action against and the accused in these cases were arrested.