Fatema Khanam announces retirement from politics!

Former spokesperson of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement Chittagong, Fatema Khanam, has announced her retirement from politics. She announced this decision on her Facebook page live on Friday (August 2) at 10:44 pm. In the 16-minute and 36-second Facebook live, Fatema Khanam said, “Those with whom I held the July movement in Chittagong are trying to make different kinds of statements about women today. They are trying to destroy women. These cannot be accepted.”

She also said, “Our politics has lost to the interests of a few people in Chittagong. Many of the front-runners of the movement are no longer there. Some brothers are responsible for this, who have liaised with the center and created one quorum after another in Chittagong.”

Fatema Khanam complained, “Our fight was against fascism, but now we have to fight with our own people. The atrocities committed against girls in Chittagong are beyond words. This work is done by the people around us. Those whom we called brothers are humiliating us today.”

She said, “It is no longer possible for me to do politics.”

Fatema directly mentioned names and said, “Khan Talat Mahmud Rafi, Russell Ahmed, Rizaur Rahman and many others have led in Chittagong. But they could not take the position they needed to take on social media.”

She called on everyone, saying, “Stop the atrocities you are doing. Those who are spreading slander today to exclude girls from politics are harming this movement.”

On Saturday (August 3), the day after the live broadcast, at 4:56 am, Fatema officially announced her departure from politics in a post on her Facebook account.

In the post, she wrote, “A vacuum never lasts long in the political arena. If someone steps aside from one path, someone else fills that space. However, I am deeply concerned about the future of women politicians in Chittagong.”

She wrote, “If any woman in this city wants to enter politics, I don’t know what her fate is. More than the obstacles from her opponents, she will have to endure more violence and insults from her own party brothers. This experience is my own.”

Fatema Khanam is currently a first-year undergraduate student in the history department of Chittagong College. She also served as the coordinator of the Chittagong city committee.

It is worth noting that on July 27, all the committees of the country, except the central committee of the Students’ Movement Against Discrimination, were suspended. The organization’s president, Rifat Rashid, made this announcement at an emergency press conference in Shahbagh, the capital.