The latest case in point is the Dinajpur firing resorted to by the police and paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) on the demonstrators protesting a plan for open pit-mining at Phulbari coal field. Their apprehensions were it would trigger massive eviction and loss of farmlands if the coal mine project were implemented. Environmental groups having ecological concerns have found a common cause with them.

The firing has proved to be lethal with seven demonstrators killed and as many as three hundred reportedly wounded. The brutal act reminds of the Kansat massacre, though the perspectives were not the same. The ferocity with which demonstrators are being attacked is totally unacceptable. Has the police, or for that matter, paramilitary forces forgotten standard methods of crowd control rather than opening fire on demonstrators that far from defusing tension exacerbates it into wider and far more raging police-people confrontation.

Was there any warning issued before firing or were shots fired in the blank to ward off the agitators? The police and BDR were armed but the demonstrators didn't hold guns; so as custodians of law and order, the former needed to display a greater sense of responsibility in using their weapons than they actually did. It was not even shooting below the knee, rather it was shoot to kill. This is a dangerous attitude on the part of law enforcers under pressured circumstances. It is totally contrary to democratic norms and damaging to national image.

We demand an immediate independent investigation into the whole incident with the probe report made public and the guilty brought to book. Has this ever happened with the previous firing incidents? If it had, we would not have perhaps seen its recurrence.