DHAKA, Jan 23, Reuter: At least 10 people were injured in Dhaka on Monday after police attacked demonstrators calling for an antigovernment strike. Rafiqul Islam Miah, a leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) alleged that a police truck tried to plough through a peaceful march, witnesses said BNP supporters had hurled stones and jeered at the policemen. Police denied the opposition charge and said they had acted on orders to stave off a countrywide general strike called for Tuesday by BNP, headed by Begum Khaleda Zia, and the fundamentalist Jamaat-E-Islami party.
Police said at least five people were injured in a bomb blast a the southern port city of Chittagong on Monday as tension grew over the proposed strike, which seeks to revive a campaign to force President Hossain Mohammad Ershad to resign.
Bangladesh’s largest opposition party, the Awami league, said it opposed the strike but was planning to hold public rallies in remembrance of nearly 20 political activists shot dead by police at Chittagong on January 24 last year.
Opposition leaders jointly led a stormy campaign of strikes in 1987 over demands for Ershad’s resignation and new elections under a caretaker government, but fell apart in 1988 due to policy differences and mutual mistrust.
At least 60 people were killed and hundreds injured in clashes during the 1987 unrest, according to official figures.
Ershad, a 58 year old general who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1982, has said the concept of caretaker government was unconstitutional and he would not step down.
Speaking after Monday’s clashes, Home Ministry officials said police had been asked to thwart what they called an “illegal” stoppage, due to start at 6 a.m. (midnight GMT), and to deal harshly with anyone trying to destroy property.
“We are imposing tight security because most people are already angry about the activists of fundamentalists,” said one police officer.
One man was killed and nearly 100 were injured this month when rival groups clashed over demands for an official ban on fundamentalist leader Moulana Delwar Hossain Said. His opponents say Said misinterpreted the Koran, the Moslem Holy book, in his addresses to thousands of followers.
Ershad broke the government’s silence over the controversy on. Monday when he spoke to thousands of former guerrillas who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971.
“You must unmask the ugly faces…and wage a movement against those who were opposed to. Our independence and are indulging in politics in the name of religion” Ershad said.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 27, 1989
