DHAKA, 23 December 2005 — Opposition leader Hasina Wajed yesterday launched a counter-offensive threatening to bring sedition charges against Prime Minister Khaleda Zia for what she said preparing a plot to kill her by harboring militants and inducting anti-liberation Jamaat-e-Islami into the Cabinet. “Prime minister, you can kill me at any time; I am not worried about my life. I am ready to give blood for my people. Don’t try to browbeat one not afraid of death,” she said at a grand rally at Madrasa Maidan in the northwestern city of Rajshahi, responding to the prime minister’s warning of treason charges against her a day before.
Hasina said, “People will try you for nurturing militants who are pushing the nation toward a suicidal course.” The Awami League chief forewarned that the citadel of power of the BNP-Jamaat government would fall apart in a mass movement. She asked the people to prepare lists of militants and Jamaat activists in their localities.
Referring to the rejection of the opposition demand for reform of the caretaker government, Hasina said reforms must be done to hold free and fair elections so that people could choose their government by ballot.
About the Aug. 21 grenade blasts at the Awami League rally in Dhaka, she accused her arch political rival of conspiring to kill her. “You wanted to kill me on Aug. 21. Can’t I file a case of sedition against you? “ the Awami League chief questioned.
“Since the power base of Khaleda Zia has been shaken, she is giving a threat of treason charge against the opposition,” Hasina told her audience. Referring to the killing of Ziaur Rahman, she said Khaleda Zia at a public meeting at Gulistan in Dhaka had accused Gen. H.M. Ershad of killing President Ziaur Rahman. “But after Zia’s death, you have received all facilities of house and car from Ershad. Doesn’t it mean that you are also involved in the killing?”
Hasina also questioned the wealth of the Zia family, saying: “How a family receiving widow and orphanage allowances could become owners of billions of taka?” In response to another remark of the prime minister, she said this soil of Bangladesh does not belong to the prime minister. “You have made ministers those who had opposed the independence and killed intellectuals of the country. Who should be charged with treason — you or me?”
