Dhaka: One policeman was killed in Dhaka and more than 100 injured as workers of Bangladesh’s principal opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), clashed with the police Saturday.
Several media persons out to cover the anti-Sheikh Hasina rally, called by the BNP, were also injured in the clashes. The BNP has called a dawn-to-dusk, nationwide strike on Sunday in response to the clashes.
Thousands of BNP leaders and workers from across Bangladesh assembled for a grand rally on Saturday afternoon at Dhaka’s Naya Paltan area which houses the opposition party’s central office. The rally had been called to drive home the demand for Hasina to step down as prime minister and for the January elections to be held under a neutral caretaker government.
Large numbers of security personnel were deployed in Dhaka Saturday since, along with the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami, ruling party Awami League, was also holding rallies in the capital.
As the BNP rally turned violent, police fired teargas to disperse the mob that had begun pelting stones. In the clashes, several journalists were injured and vehicles, ambulances and police pickets were set on fire.
From the Naya Paltan area, clashes between the BNP workers and the policemen spread to other areas of Dhaka, like Fakirapul, Shantinagar and Kakrail. The Central Police Hospital in Rajarbagh area was also attacked.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain told reporters that his officers were victims of “opposition attacks”. “The constable who died was hit in the head by opposition activists,” he said.
In a Facebook post, Raju Hamid, publicity and publications secretary, Dhaka Union of Journalists, said that journalists from Ittefaq, Somoy TV, Jamuna TV, Kalbela and other print, TV and digital networks were attacked when they were out to cover the rally.
Awami League took to Twitter to condemn the attack and said: “This attack only emboldens BNP’s plot to hit the streets to overthrow the government through violence in sync with the call by its acting chief Tarique Rahman who was described by foreign envoys as a symbol of violent politics and (is) a fugitive of justice.”
Talking to ThePrint in Dhaka, Nitai Roy Chowdhury, vice-chairman of the BNP’s central committee, said: “I was on the stage at the site of the rally in Naya Paltan along with other senior BNP leaders like Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and Gayeshwar Chandra Roy. We had planned to hold a peaceful rally demanding that a caretaker government be installed before elections.”
Roy Chowdhury said thousands of BNP workers were in the process of assembling peacefully when activists of the Chhatra League and Jubo League — the student’s union and the youth association, respectively, of the Awami League — attacked them with rods and petrol bombs.
“Our party workers had to defend themselves. Policemen stood there and watched. Later, when the clashes intensified, police lathicharged BNP workers. Today’s incident shows yet again how fascist Sheikh Hasina’s government is,” he said.
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Another wave of discontentment
Almost a year ago, a similar incident had taken place in Dhaka. The BNP’s top brass had called for the overthrow of the Hasina-led Awami League government and fixed December 10, 2022, as the date for a nationwide agitation to topple the government.
“The country will be run on the directives of Zias (Begum Khaleda and Tarique Rahman Zia) from December 10 onwards,” India Today had quoted BNP leader Amanullah Aman as saying in a report published on 20 November, 2022.
Three days before the rally was supposed to take place, one BNP worker was killed and at least 30 others injured after a clash erupted between the police and party workers in front of BNP’s central office in Naya Paltan.
“Witnesses said the law enforcers fired teargas shells, shotgun pellets to disperse the BNP men while the party activists and supporters retaliated by hurling brick chips,” The Daily Star had reported on 7 December, 2022.
With national elections slated for January 2024, and the BNP not showing any signs of taking back its demand for a caretaker government in Bangladesh, Saturday’s violence may only be the beginning of a winter of discontent in Bangladesh.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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