Staff Reporter:
Describing the Aynaghar (secret torture cells) as horrific, Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus yesterday said the deposed Awami League government had established the age of brutality in all sectors and the Aynaghar was the sample of it.
“Aynaghar is the sample of how the previous government established Al-Jahiliyyah (the Age of Ignorance) in all sectors,” he told after visiting three spots of Aynaghar in Dhaka.
Briefing media at Foreign Service Academy here, Chief Adviser’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam said the chief adviser mentioned that what he witnessed during his visit to Aynaghar was ‘beggar description’, terming it as a “horrible scene” which is far away from humanity.
“How many victims described their ordeal to me seemed elievable…how many (victims of enforced disappearance) and how much I listened seemed elievable,” Alam said quoting the chief adviser as saying.
Prof Yunus said despite having no fault, the victims of enforced disappearance were tortured by confining them in Aynaghar. “Is it our society? Had we built this society?” he questioned.
The victims, he said, were put in such chambers which were smaller than chicken hoops and they were confined and tortured there for consecutive months. The victims were deprived of their min-imum rights, he added.
“This was an offense of all of us. We allowed it to happen,” the Chief Adviser said, adding that if this society could not be brought out of the absolute form of repression, it will not sustain.
Expressing his gratitude to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances for publishing its report, he said this is an important document for the nation and called for inclusion the issue in textbooks.
Prof Yunus reiterated that all those involved in the incidents of enforced disappearance would be brought to justice.
The chief adviser visited three spots of Aynaghar, the notorious secret prison during the era of fall-en Sheikh Hasina’s government, in Dhaka yesterday.
Advisers Dr Asif Nazrul, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Adilur Rahman Khan, Asif Mahmud, Mahfuj Alam and Nahid Islam, among others, were present.
Members of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, victims, local and interna-tional media accompanied the Chief Adviser during the visit in the spots located in Dhaka’s Agar-gaon, Kachukhet and Uttara areas.
Speaking at the media briefing, Shafiqul Alam said Prof Yunus visited every secret torture cell of Aynaghar, while victims of enforced disappearance described the ordeal they faced during their detention there.
He said there were 700 to 800 Aynaghars across the country and all those would be unearthed.
Chief Adviser’s Deputy Press Secretaries Apurba Jahangir and Abul Kalam Azad Majumder, Senior Assistant Press Secretary Foyez Ahammad and Assistant Press Secretary Suchismita Tithi were present at the briefing.
