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| Sunday, 29 February 2004 |
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Fourth opposition strike hits Bangladesh Reuters - The fourth opposition-led general strike this month gripped Bangladesh on Saturday, emptying roads and closing businesses, despite complaints that such campaigns were causing serious economic disruption. As in the previous strikes, police drove away hundreds of strike supporters gathering on streets of the capital Dhaka. Police detained about 20 activists from outside the central office of the main opposition party, the Awami League, which sponsored the strikes, witnesses said. The Awami League and its supporters have launched the series of strikes to campaign against what they say is sweeping corruption, political repression, deteriorating law and order and rising prices. Awami chief Sheikh Hasina said on Friday she would call for more strikes unless Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, about half way through her five-year term, called early elections. General strikes and street disturbances are common in Bangladesh but no governments have been toppled by such protests since 1990. Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, the secretary-general of Khaleda' ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), accused Awami of telling lies and spreading false allegations. Bangladeshis should remain alert to the opposition's goal of causing anarchy and halting economic progress, he said. The next elections are not due before October 2006. Business leaders, who say each day of a general strike costs the impoverished country $60 million, have urged the politicians to spare the economy from their political arguments. The opposition has called three one-day general strikes since February 12. The opposition said an attack on one of Bangladesh's leading literary figures, Dr. Humayun Azad, near Dhaka University on Friday night showed the government could not protect even prominent figures. Azad, an author and senior teacher at the university, was in a critical condition after he was attacked with choppers and home-made bombs as he walked out of a book fair, police said. Government officials said the attackers would be caught and punished. |
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