Towns and cities across Bangladesh were paralyzed yesterday as the opposition launched a three-day general strike to protest a grenade attack on an opposition party rally that killed five people.
Demonstrators took to the streets in the tense capital, Dhaka, and other parts of the country as riot-equipped security forces stood guard.
The strike came as human rights group Amnesty International appealed to the government to fully investigate Thursday's blast at the Awami League rally that killed four party activists and former finance minister Shah A.M.S. Kibria.
The attack occurred just over a week before Dhaka plans to host a summit of South Asian leaders.
The opposition said Friday the Muslim-majority nation was being "held hostage to violent extremism and radicalism" aimed at wrecking its secular foundations.
The government, an Islamist-allied coalition led by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party, dismissed the allegations as "emotional outpourings" and pledged a full probe into the attack.
The dawn-to-dusk strike which ends tomorrow emptied towns and cities of traffic, stranded trains in stations and shut businesses, shops and schools, police and witnesses said. Saturday is a working day in Bangladesh.
Police broke up two rallies in downtown Dhaka and arrested two women after demonstrators attacked security forces, city police chief Mizanur Rahman told reporters. There was no immediate comment from the Awami League.
Some 8,000 riot police were guarding key locations in the teeming capital, Rahman said.
Police also said they arrested five people in the southeastern port city of Chittagong when they tried to stage a demonstration outside Awami League offices.
Strikes are common in Bangladesh where the opposition enforced 22 shutdowns last year, despite pleas from aid donors and business to find other ways to protest, saying such actions drained the nation's impoverished economy.
The strike halted cargo deliveries at Chittagong Port, port officials said.
In its statement, London-based Amnesty also accused the government of failing to investigate similar earlier attacks with "rigor and determination."
The group said "unless such inquiries are conducted thoroughly and impartially, they will lack credibility and the culprits will be sheltered from justice."
The strike brought other parts of the country to a halt, police reported.
"Shops are closed, there are long traffic jams of buses and trucks and sporadic marches but no violence," police chief Abdul Aziz Sarker said in southwestern Khulna.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant