Paris, May 25 ( IANS) A leading international human rights organisation strongly condemned a university administration in Bangladesh after two students were recently detained and handed over to the police, while four others were expelled over "allegations of homosexuality", terming the move as "repressive measures".
JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF) said that the actions taken against the students of Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University (HSTU) in Dinajpur district were in blatant violation of the Constitution of Bangladesh, existing laws, human rights, and fundamental civil liberties.
Expressing grave concern, the rights body said that a university must never become a centre for “moral policing, social persecution, or state and institutional interference” in individuals’ private lives. It is alleged that the HSTU administration, instead of upholding its constitutional and ethical responsibilities as an educational institution, is legitimising "social hatred, rumours, public pressure, and conservative extremism."
“Such conduct is completely unacceptable in any free, democratic, and civilised society,” the JMBF noted.
Criticising the actions by the university authorities, JMBF’s Chief Advisor, renowned French LGBTQ+ rights activist Robert Simon, said, “It is extremely concerning that the administration is using vague and discriminatory terms such as ‘the university’s reputation’ and ‘social degradation’ to attack personal freedom."
“When an educational institution attempts to control private life, personal relationships, and sexual identity, it ceases to be a place of education and humanity and instead becomes an instrument of oppression. This must stop immediately,” he added.
JMBF emphasised that depriving individuals of personal liberty in the name of morality, publicly humiliating them, and targeting people because of their identities reflect a “fascist and anti-human-rights” mentality. It stressed that no student should be forced to conform to someone else’s “moral preferences”, adding that the role of the state or university administration is not to control citizens’ private lives but to ensure their safety, dignity, and rights.
JMBF called on conscious citizens, teachers, students, human rights organisations, lawyers, journalists, and democratic forces to unite and speak out against these grave human rights violations in Bangladesh.
“If the humiliation, expulsion, and handing over of students to the police based on personal identity and allegations are legitimised today, then tomorrow any dissenting opinion, different identity, or independent thought may be suppressed in the same manner,” it noted.
--IANS
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