Ramu attack worries young Buddhists
Participants at a rally at Teacher-Student Centre of Dhaka University yesterday protesting the attack on Buddhists.Photo: STAR
The young Buddhists have termed the Ramu violence an attack on their existence, which has been jeopardised through trepidation and mistrust. “We are really worried about our future in the country as we are falling victims to attacks and violence in different places," said Probal Barua Sani, a private university student in Chittagong. "We are now living with an inferiority complex, which seriously affects our psyche,” he told The Daily Star at the Second Buddhist Youth Festival-2012 at the capital's Bangladesh Shishu Academy yesterday. Several other youths who attended the festival echoed Sani. The daylong festival included discussion, magic show, fun show, documentary show, career seminars, jubo adda, and quiz competition. Although the festival was supposed to be a source of great enjoyment for the Buddhist youths, the September 29 attack in Ramu in Cox's Bazar and some other places in Chittagong has overshadowed it. A young jobholder, Ripon Barua, said he did not want to recall the ugly and terrible experiences of the violence and wanted live peacefully with all other communities. Founder Chairman of Buddhist Youth Festival Group Charu Uttam Barua said the young generation would prove through their activities that the Buddhists and their culture were not any different in the country. Educationist Prof Muhammad Zafar Iqbal said there was no scope to consider any particular community separately because all were citizens of this country. Terming the Ramu violence a failure of the administration, he urged the government to be alert about the evil forces so that such incident does not repeat.
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