DHAKA: Bangladesh’s most prestigious university has suspended a professor for writing a column critical of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s father, as the ruling party cracks down on dissent in a tense election year.

Morshed Hasan Khan was “suspended until further notice” from Dhaka University, its vice-chancellor said on Tuesday, after the student wing of the Awami League staged angry rallies on campus.

University head Mohammad Akhtaruzzaman said Khan defamed Bangladesh’s first post-independence president and Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in the controversial article published in a Bengali daily.

In his column, Khan said it was military strongman and opposition hero Ziaur Rahman — not Hasina’s father — who declared Bangladesh’s independence, a hugely provocative assertion, at the start of the war in 1971.

Khan also suggested most of the Awami League’s leadership, including Hasina’s father, fled Bangladesh when the war broke out.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2018