Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son and ICT advisor of ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on Sunday said that protestors have demanded the expulsion of 41 journalists from the Press Club. He further took aim at the protestors who accused Sheikh Hasina's government of crackdown on freedom of speech.
"After all their allegations of my mother's government's crackdown on freedom of speech? So a mob gets to provide a list of journalists to throw out?" he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Joy, who is currently based in the US, also questioned the international media over its silence on the issue.
"I would like to hear from the international media and government on this. You have been so vocal in the past, why are you silent now?" The protestors said that action should be taken against journalists who incited violence against students and the public, Dhaka Tribune reported.
"The students are now involved in the task of state reform. To prevent these national enemies from causing harm by exploiting the name of the Press Club, we request their expulsion and a ban on their participation in journalism," the statement by protestors read.
Not just journalists, turns out that even the Supreme Court of Bangladesh isn't safe. Joy said in another post that hundreds of protestors have threatened to attack the Supreme Court. Not only this, they have also threatened to burn down the house of Obaidul Hassan, Chief Justice of Bangladesh, as per Joy.
He further claimed that these protestors demanded that the court should resign and they provided a list of the people who should be appointed instead. The interim government in the country, led by Muhammad Yunus, gave in to the protestors' demands and appointed Justices named by them.
"How can the Supreme Court of a country be changed without any due process, without elected Parliament? This is not reform, this is mob rule. There is no rule of law in Bangladesh when even the Supreme Court is not safe," he wrote in a post on X.
Meanwhile, Hassan tendered his resignation on Saturday from his post after protestors surrounded the Bangladesh Supreme Court premises and gave him an ultimatum to quit within an hour.
The protestors threatened that they would storm the residences of the top court judges and the Chief Justice if they failed to resign. Obaidul Hassan told media that he decided to step down taking into consideration the safety of the judges of the top court and lower courts across Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has been in the throes of chaos after students started protesting over a jobs quota system. Under this system, up to 30 per cent of government jobs were reserved for family members of 1971 war veterans.
After the protests, the Supreme Court had slashed the job quotas to 5 per cent. The protests, however took a different turn, with protestors demanding Sheikh Hasina's resignation. Over 500 people have lost their lives and hundreds have been injured due to the violence.
Hasina resigned last week and fled Dhaka after protestors stormed Bangabhaban, her official residence. An interim government has been formed under the leadership of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.