About 10,000 garment workers rioted yesterday close to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, smashing cars and buses and vandalizing factories in anger at high food prices and low wages, police said.
Police fired tear gas and used batons to break up the protests and at least 28 people were injured.
The textile workers went on the rampage in Fatullah, some 20km south of Dhaka, demanding better pay amid soaring rice prices, police Inspector Nasir Ahmed said.
PHOTO :AP
He said they wrecked cars and buses, attacked factories, and hurled bricks and stones at police who were forced to retaliate with tear gas.
Most of the injured were police officers, he added.
Police sub-inspector Shafiqul Islam said the rampage involved around 10,000 workers from several garment factories, adding: “They became unruly demanding higher wages, saying their current wages don’t even meet basic food needs.”
The government says that food prices, notably the staple rice, have doubled in the last year, caused by a massive shortfall in production after devastating floods and a cyclone last year.
The unrest in Bangladesh was the latest incident of the fallout of mounting food prices.
At least five people have died in similar protests over high food and fuel prices in Haiti, while disturbances have rocked Egypt, Cameroon, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries in the past month.
Meanwhile, thousands of militant Islamists threw stones at police and other auxiliary forces as violence erupted for a second day on Friday around the national mosque in central Dhaka, leaving more than 70 people injured, officials and witnesses said.
Street battles broke out as police in armored cars fired teargas to disrupt rallies and chase protesters off the roads in downtown Dhaka.
Angry mobs torched police jeeps and motorbikes during the demonstration.
The violence spread to the country’s principal port city of Chittagong, where hundreds of Islamic students were involved in attacking vehicles, shops and other businesses.
Students of local madrassas also set up barricades on the highway connecting the southeastern commercial hub with the capital Dhaka.
“We will oppose any measure to improve the lot of women which goes against the injunctions of the holy Koran,” said Mufti Fazlul Huq Amini who heads a large madrassa in the private sector.
In Dhaka, protesters took shelter in mosques as police followed them with swinging batons.
About 120 protesters were injured in the two days of clashes, prominent Islamic cleric Shaikul Hadith Allama Azizul Huq said, claiming at least 25 people were arrested during the violence in Dhaka.
The protesters, belonging to the committee for the prevention of anti-Koran laws, are accusing the interim government of trying to alter the inheritance rights of men and women in order to bring about gender equality, which is said to be contrary to Islamic injunctions.
The government has denied any such move in a proposed women development policy that had been recently circulated in order to elicit public opinion.
Nearly 5,000 extra policemen were deployed in the congested squatter colonies in southern Dhaka and several sensitive installations, deputy district administrator Nahid Ahmad said.
The demonstration, banned under a state of emergency proclaimed last January, was called by the Islamic clerics who are opposed to any change in the Muslim inheritance laws considered by many development analysts as biased against female inheritors.
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