This is not the first time that ruling party elements have violently attacked meetings held by these two organisations, and it is clear that the government can no longer be bothered to even make a pretence of tolerating any kind of opposition.

To make things worse, senior government functionaries have even gone to the length of denying that the attack was the work of ruling party activists, despite the fact that the identity of the attackers couldn't be in any doubt given the witness accounts.

This kind of bare-faced mendacity shows nothing more clearly than the contempt for the intelligence of the general public.

It is bad enough that the ruling party has such little regard for democratic norms and that it acquiesces in such disgraceful conduct of its cadres, but to then try to deny the reality of what happened is to add serious insult to injury.

The government is often critical of opposition activity that it deems to be disruptive or unlawful, but what can the government say now when it is the front bodies of the ruling party themselves that acted in a lawless and undemocratic manner? We in the media have never ceased to criticise the opposition when it called hartals or erred in any other way, but what happened in Rangpur with the police as a mute spectator is a wholesale denial of the right of assembly and dissent which is patently repugnant to any democratic sensibility.

The government has a responsibility to protect the right to assembly of its opponents. The government seems no longer inclined to even pay lip service to democracy and no longer apparently even considers itself accountable for its actions.

It seems as though the government has lost faith in democracy.