Muktijuddho Moncho — a platform comprising descendants of freedom fighters - yesterday continued their protest against Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader regarding his remark on membership of the party.

They again demanded unconditional apology from the AL lawmaker, and threatened to make him retire from the party post otherwise, by staging countrywide protest.

Speakers at the programme, in front of National Museum in Shahbagh, alleged that a reactionary faction of Awami League is trying to accommodate Jamaat-Shibir activists in the party by dropping devoted leaders.

"Being the general secretary of a pro-liberation party, you [Obaidul Quader] cannot give such a speech which contradicts the party's ideology," said Al Mamun, general secretary of Muktijoddha Sangsad Santan Command's Dhaka University unit.

"Offer unconditional apology and step down from the post [of AL general secretary|. You have lost the moral right to be in that post," he added.

"Soon after we protested Obaidul Quader's speech through a press conference, he at another press conference denied saying so, and claimed it to be propaganda. But in video footage broadcast on different TV channels, he was seen saying it," said Prof AKM Jamal Uddin, convener of the platform.

Speaking at a press conference on June 30 about AL's member recruitment campaign, Obaidul Quader said there is no rationale in considering if anyone's family member was involved in war crimes when recruiting members.

On July 4, while exchanging views with the newly-elected executive committee members of Bangladesh Secretariat Reporters Forum (BSRF), Quader, however, reverted from his earlier stance, and said no family member of war criminals and anti-liberation forceswill be inducted into Awami League.