St Gregory’s High School & Co-llege, a historic Catholic educational establishment in Dhaka founded in 1882. Located in the old city, it has closed its doors indefinitely after it was damaged from recent violence involving thousands of students, with at least a hundred injured, plus wi-despread destruction of its facilities.
At the same time, a leader of Bangladesh’s Hindu minority, the cleric Chinmoy Krishna Das of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), was arrested yesterday afternoon, at the capital’s airport, on charges of “sedition.” These two incidents say a lot about the early days of the country’s interim government under Muhammad Yunus. After more than one hundred days, it has failed to stop a rising Islamist wave against minorities, despite several attempts at reforms.
The Nobel Prize laureate who took over the country to lead it towards democratic elections is not living up to the hopes of those who thought that the flight of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, after 15 years in power, would allow Bangladesh to really turn the page, and build a country without discrimination and inclusive of all. On Nov. 24, around 5 pm, a mob of more than 500 unidentified people attacked St. Gregory’s High School & College. The attackers broke through the security fence, injuring two guards, Nazmul Haque and Suman Gomes, who were hospitalised. The crowd vandalised classrooms, shattered window panes, destroyed documents, and damaged CCTV cameras, even with explosives. Brother Placido Peter Ribeiro, the principal, expressed his dismay at the destruction. “This was a premeditated assault,” he said.