July 7, 2018

In recent years, drug addiction has significantly increased in the whole world, especially in the South Asian countries like Bangladesh. The trend of drug consumption is higher in youth and teenage, aged between 15 and 30 years. Students are mostly falling victims to drug abuse, which eventually lowers their standards of education and attendance at schools and colleges. There are number of ways why teenagers try drugs. Peer pressure is one of the leading causes; additionally, curiosity, excitement, despair and frustration for continuous failure in works or economic insolvency, easy access to drugs, dejection in love, and mental stress due to family problems.

Community Development for Peace Foundation (CDPF), arranged a seminar to raise awareness against terrorism and drugs on 7^th July 2018 at United International University. This seminar was conducted by some high profiled resource personnel like Coordinator (United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime), Officer from different social organization, Senior Judge of Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) court, Barrister of the Supreme court of Bangladesh, Coordinator of BRAC University and many more. Throughout their lectures all they intended is to raise awareness on the negative sides of drugs, crime to motivate students to take position against this crucial social issue.

The lectures were as follows:

Plenary 1: “Finding your Purpose and Identity in a Globally Interconnected World” by Simon Park, Country Coordinator, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

He started his lectures by defining how a person becomes a terrorist. Life is a long journey where one will face several challenges, in Simon’s point of view, the person who has the guts to face these challenges and overcome them are the ones who succeed in life. Every human is unique so is their way of responding to different challenges in life. The real challenge is to accept yourself and others. He then talked about generation gap. The young generations of this age are more exposed to the social media which makes them an easy target to brainwash and motivate them for wrong doings. Some face the challenge as a lesson or an experience and come back to normal life.

As they say, “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful”.

Plenary 2: “A Consistent Life and the Scenario of Darkness” by Mr. Atikul Islam, Senior Judicial Magistrate, CMM Court, Dhaka.

According to him, “Excellence has no limit”. The art of life is the way how one chooses to decorate his/her life. Different people will have different Aim, determination, perception to design the art of living. But addiction to drugs and terrorism are enough to ruin the art of life. He shared some of his personal experiences from the Holey Artisan Attack, etc. He said many drug dealers, addictors and terrorists confessed their crime in front of him and how they ended up to such dark holes without knowing the consequences. The young generations mostly come to this path when their expectations and dreams are not fulfilled, facing depressions and frustrated from facing constant failure in life and also sometimes to make easy money. Thus 80% crime takes place from drug addiction. Student life is the peak point of life to choose that one correct path among thousand paths to lead a healthy and happy life. To make that correct choice parents’ support play an immense role.

Plenary 3: “Social awareness on drug and Crime” by Raghib Rauf Chowdhury, Barrister, Bangladesh Supreme Court.

He compared our culture with the western world. One of the main reason why students of our country are getting more involved with drugs are they don’t know how to utilize their leisure time. In our culture, until a person completes their educational degree, they depend on their parents. Due to this, many families prohibit their children from doing part-time jobs. Thus the students have nothing to do in their leisure time and out of curiosity, try drugs and end up getting addicted to it. “Student life is the golden phase of life”, therefore the students must be properly guided and make them realize about their responsibility towards their family, friends and society and to create their own Art of Life.

Plenary 4: “The impact of Radical thinking and a beautiful life” by Md. Haider Ali Khan, Additional DIG, Anti-Terrorism Unit Bangladesh Police.

In his lecture he explained the term “Jongi”. Whenever someone is forced on their norms, culture, traditions, beliefs and religion then a Jongi is formed. Jongi is a kind of terrorist. They may attack in groups or individually. Bangladesh has experienced Jongi attacks at different periods of time. It all started when some Bangladeshi went to Afghanistan to help in a war, they got trained there and attained knowledge about Jihad. After coming back, they formed a group to spread the idea of Jihad, to convert unbelievers, or efforts toward the moral betterment of society. But unfortunately, the modern definition of Jihad is to die for Islam and also kill other people to enter into Heaven. Initially they send an Islamic message in social media account and from there they undergo certain steps to choose their final target who will execute the bomb blast.

After this a question /answer session started where the students asked different types of questions related to drugs and terrorism.

1. Why only students from private Universities and from upper level class family become Jangi?

Ans: The students from private universities dream for a bright future, they get more opportunities in life as most of them belong to upper class family. So when they fail to fulfill the expectations of their family, due to depression they choose the wrong path.

2.   Why only the negative things are more highlighted in private universities, where there are many positive things that take place in Private University?

Ans: The students from lower class or middle class do not bother much to go out of the box and do something extraordinary. But the students from private university have bigger ambitions.

3.  Why there are fewer expectations from Madrasah students?

Ans: Because they do not get many opportunities in life, only few get lucky to shine in life and represent the country.

Plenary 5: A Vote of thanks by Dr. Chowdhury Mofizur Rahman, Vice Chancellor, United International University.

Practice ethics not as a course for achieving grades only rather implement it on real life for the betterment of the society and for better future.

As Albert Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” So failure, distress, depression, frustration are part and parcel of life but always try to look on the brighter side of life rather than accepting your failure and giving up.