One of the senior leaders of the National Citizen Party (NCP) has said his recent trip to Cox’s Bazar was not a vacation but a silent protest.
Hasnat Abdullah, Chief Organizer (South), submitted a written explanation Thursday in response to a show-cause notice issued by party leadership. He said he was disillusioned after learning that several key voices from last year’s July uprising had been excluded from the party’s official July Declaration event.
“To me, this was not only a political misstep but also a moral failure,” Hasnat wrote.
He said that on August 4, he decided to boycott the event in Dhaka and leave the city to reflect.
“I saw no reason to attend a gathering where division was prioritized over unity and where the voices of a select few were elevated above those of the martyrs and the wounded,” he stated.
That reflection, he explained, took the form of a personal trip. But once images of his travel surfaced in the media, things escalated quickly.
According to Hasnat, state intelligence agents had tracked their movements from the airport and handed over recordings to media outlets, which he claimed edited the footage with dramatic music and misleading narratives to depict them as conspirators.
He went further, accusing some news outlets of launching a misogynistic smear campaign against Senior Joint Member Secretary Tasnim Jara, who was also on the trip.
“She was subjected to slut-shaming and character assassination simply because she is a woman,” Hasnat wrote. “This is not only condemnable — it is a direct attack on women’s political participation.”
But his sharpest criticism was aimed at his own party.
“The most painful part,” he added, “is that instead of standing against these abuses, our own party responded in a tone that seemed to validate the false allegations.”
He argued that the NCP should have publicly condemned the intelligence agencies’ involvement and called out the unethical coverage by certain media groups.
On Wednesday, the party had issued show-cause notices to five senior members: Chief Coordinator Nasiruddin Patwari, Hasnat Abdullah (South), Sarjis Alam (North), Tasnim Jara, and her husband, Joint Convener Khaled Saifullah.
All were instructed to submit written responses within 24 hours to NCP Convener Nahid Islam and Member Secretary Akhtar Hossain.
The notices came during the week of events marking the anniversary of the July uprising — a movement that brought the NCP into national focus last year.
Hasnat’s response adds a new layer of tension inside a party already split between different camps.
He didn’t deny making the trip. He didn’t claim it was sanctioned either. He simply explained why he went and what he felt.
Now the question is, will the party listen — or will it push him out for asking it to look in the mirror?
