Clashes erupted and transport and business was disrupted in Bangladesh yesterday after the main opposition party called a second strike in three days to protest at what it said was "barbaric" police action in the first strike.
The Awami League, the country's biggest opposition party, said in a statement nearly 100 of its members and supporters, including several senior leaders, were injured in the latest country-wide strike.
Witnesses said clashes erupted yesterday, a working day in Bangladesh, when baton-wielding police turned on stone-throwing protesters.
PHOTO: AFP
"The on-and-off-again battle is mostly concentrated around the Awami League central office at Gulistan, in the heart of the city," one witness said. Others said protesters had exploded some home-made bombs but no one was injured.
The strike was in protest against police action on Thursday, when the Awami League called a strike to mobilize support for its campaign to topple Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia and force early elections, which are otherwise not due before October 2006.
Awami League general secretary Abdul Jalil said "hundreds of our party leaders, including a former minister, and supporters were wounded in barbaric police actions during Thursday's strike."
The former minister, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, and several others were still in hospital, party leaders said yesterday.
In the capital Dhaka, hundreds of opposition activists took to the streets under the watchful eyes of hundreds of police and paramilitary troops, witnesses said.
The strike had affected Chittagong port and major towns across the country, reporters said. Most shops remained closed and schools suspended examinations. The Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges also remained shut.
On Friday night, suspected opposition supporters set fire to a bus and damaged four other vehicles in Dhaka, police said. No one was injured.
Awami chief Sheikh Hasina said while visiting the wounded in hospitals on Friday that the government had pushed the country "into unprecedented lawlessness, making killings, lootings and abductions rampant."
She urged the people to push Prime Minister Khaleda's more than two-year-old government out and make way for early elections.
Khaleda's Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) is expected to hold a rally in the capital later yesterday.
Khaleda has rejected calls for early polls, saying the country is making satisfactory progress on the economic and social fronts.
"The Awami League has a history of doing bad things and trying to retard progress and disrupt peace," BNP secretary-general Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan said on Friday.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS