Bangladesh was brought to a halt for the second time in a week yesterday as a 36-hour nationwide opposition strike over changes in the electoral system began, amid tight security.
Police said 9,000 policemen and 3,000 paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) personnel were deployed in Dhaka after five vehicles, including three buses, were torched on Saturday, creating widespread panic.
Shops, businesses and schools were shut yesterday — a weekday in the Muslim-majority nation — and major roads and highways were deserted.
The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its key Islamist ally, Jamaat-e--Islami, are enforcing the strike in protest against changes in the electoral system, which they say unfairly favor the incumbent government.
Dhaka police spokesman Masud Ahmed said magistrates were deployed on the roads to tackle violence head-on.
“On Saturday night, the magistrates sentenced 55 people to up to three months in jail for vandalism and torching vehicles,” Ahmed said.
Intelligence chief Colonel Ziaul Ahsan said that paramilitary forces were patrolling Dhaka streets in vans, but the situation was peaceful.
The strike was called after Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from the ruling Awami League party announced plans last month to scrap a -decades-old system under which a caretaker government takes over during election time.
The system is designed to cover three months over each polls in Bangladesh, which has a long tradition of political violence since independence in 1971.
BNP leader Khaleda Zia said her right-of-center party would not contest any future polls if the government scrapped the caretaker system, which oversaw four successive polls. Major Islamist parties backed Zia’s move.
At least 2,000 policemen were deployed in Chittagong where cargo delivery at the port, which handles 90 percent of the country’s foreign trade, came to a halt, local police said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in