Dhaka: With two days to go for the 12th national elections, reports are coming in of polling booths and election camps being set on fire across Bangladesh. These attacks have been reported from Feni, Rajshahi, Natore and Chapainawabganj districts.
Police said in some places Molotov cocktails were used to set fire to booths and election camps by unidentified persons and they are trying to determine whether the attacks were aimed at disrupting the Sunday polls.
In Cumilla district, workers of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), clashed with the police near the Government Women’s College Friday. Five BNP workers were injured in the melee.
BNP workers are out on the streets distributing pamphlets listing the failures of the Sheikh Hasina government and asking citizens to refrain from casting their ballots come polling day.
In Feni district, a polling booth at Charshaha Bhikari High School was set on fire by unidentified persons Friday and the teachers’ auditorium was gutted. Senior Assistant Superintendent of Police (Sonagazi-Daganbhuiyan Circle) Tasnim Hossain told local media that the police were investigating the incident to determine whether it was aimed at disrupting the polls.
Molotov cocktails were thrown Friday inside the office room of Akkelpur High School of Ganipur union of Bagmara, which has been designated as a polling station. Two other similar incidents were reported on the same day in Bagha Upazila, but those could not be ascertained as arson attacks.
“Law enforcement agencies know the saboteurs’ plans surrounding the upcoming 12th national elections. They had planned to create panic among the public on election day by causing loud explosions or detonating (molotov) cocktails,” Bangladesh’s Inspector General of Police (IGP) Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun told tbsnews.net Friday during a security briefing at Willes Little Flower School and College in Dhaka.
On concerns about ‘planned sabotage’, he said, “Police are fully prepared, and no acts of sabotage will be tolerated. There might be isolated incidents, but police have prevented all significant nationwide sabotage attempts.”
Earlier Friday, BNP standing committee member Moyeen Khan said at a press briefing in Dhaka that the government “cannot force people to vote”.
“There are no laws in Bangladesh about this. The government says that asking people not to vote is unlawful, but this is a lie. Everyone must be aware of this,” he added.
Friday’s arson attacks come after a period of relatively peaceful protests by the opposition since the middle of last November.
Though “peaceful” towards the beginning, in October last year, protests by the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, eventually turned violent resulting in the deaths of policemen, citizens and one journalist.
The BNP and the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League blamed each other for the violence.
The BNP and the Jamaat were out on the streets demanding the dismissal of the Sheikh Hasina government and the installation of a caretaker government before the polls. Hasina rejected the demand.
The BNP has stuck to its boycott of the polls, while the Jamaat has been barred by the courts from participating in the electoral process.
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